QA: Ted Morgan

ploaded on Feb 23, 2010

On this Q&A, our guest was Pulitzer prize winning author Ted Morgan. His 19th book, “Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu That Led America Into the Vietnam War,” is the story of a 1954 battle where the French were defeated by the Vietnamese resistance forces, ending French rule in Indochina. That battle ultimately led to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

The Downfall of Joseph McCarthy (Compare to Donald Trump)

was an American attorney who became famous during Senator Joseph McCarthy’s investigations into Communist activity in the United States during the Second Red Scare. Cohn gained special prominence during the Army–McCarthy hearings. He was also a member of the U.S. Department of Justice’s prosecution team at the espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

Born to an observant Jewish family in The Bronx, New York City.

Cohn was the only child of Dora (née Marcus; 1892–1967) and
Judge Albert C. Cohn (1885–1959), who was influential in Democratic Party politics.
His great-uncle was Joshua Lionel Cowen, the founder and longtime owner of the Lionel Corporation, a manufacturer of toy trains.

The Rosenberg trial brought the 24-year-old Cohn to the attention of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director
J. Edgar Hoover,
who recommended him to Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy hired Cohn as his chief counsel, choosing him over Robert Kennedy, reportedly in part to avoid accusations of an anti-Semitic motivation for the investigations.
(wiki) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Cohn

In 1952 Senator McCarthy made Roy Cohn the chief counsel to the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate. Cohn became famous for his aggressive style during the Army-McCarthy hearings. After McCarthy was censured in 1954, Cohn went into private practice. Over the next thirty years his clients included Donald Trump, Tony Salerno, and the Catholic Archdiocese of New York.

What Donald Trump Learned From Roy Cohn… (w/Guest: Jamie Weinstein)

http://democracynow.org – With the Republican National Convention opening in Cleveland in less than two weeks, the party’s presumptive nominee, Donald Trump, is facing a new wave of controversies, from Trump’s tweeting of an anti-Semitic image showing Hillary Clinton against a backdrop of cash and a Star of David to his joke about Mexico attacking the United States. We spend the hour with Trump biographer Wayne Barrett, author of “Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Deals, the Downfall, the Reinvention.” Barrett has been reporting on Trump since the 1970s. We begin by talking about Trump’s close relationship with the late Roy Cohn, who once served as a top aide to the red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America

In this landmark work, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Ted Morgan examines the McCarthyite strain in American politics, from its origins in the period that followed the Bolshevik Revolution to the present. Morgan argues that Senator Joseph McCarthy did not emerge in a vacuum—he was, rather, the most prominent in a long line of men who exploited the issue of Communism for political advantage.

In 1918, America invaded Russia in an attempt at regime change. Meanwhile, on the home front, the first of many congressional investigations of Communism was conducted. Anarchist bombs exploded from coast to coast, leading to the political repression of the Red Scare.

Soviet subversion and espionage in the United States began in 1920, under the cover of a trade mission. Franklin Delano Roosevelt granted the Soviets diplomatic recognition in 1933, which gave them an opportunity to expand their spy networks by using their embassy and consulates as espionage hubs. Simultaneously, the American Communist Party provided a recruitment pool for homegrown spies. Martin Dies, Jr., the first congressman to make his name as a Red hunter, developed solid information on Communist subversion through his Un-American Activities Committee. However, its hearings were marred by partisan attacks on the New Deal, presaging McCarthy.

The most pervasive period of Soviet espionage came during World War II, when Russia, as an ally of the United States, received military equipment financed under the policy of lend-lease. It was then that highly placed spies operated inside the U.S. government and in America’s nuclear facilities. Thanks to the Venona transcripts of KGB cable traffic, we now have a detailed account of wartime Soviet espionage, down to the marital problems of Soviet spies and the KGB’s abject efforts to capture deserting Soviet seamen on American soil.

During the Truman years, Soviet espionage was in disarray following the defections of Elizabeth Bentley and Igor Gouzenko. The American Communist Party was much diminished by a number of measures, including its expulsion from the labor unions, the prosecution of its leaders under the Smith Act, and the weeding out, under Truman’s loyalty program, of subversives in government. As Morgan persuasively establishes, by the time McCarthy exploited the Red issue in 1950, the battle against Communists had been all but won by the Truman administration.

In this bold narrative history, Ted Morgan analyzes the paradoxical culture of fear that seized a nation at the height of its power. Using Joseph McCarthy’s previously unavailable private papers and recently released transcripts of closed hearings of McCarthy’s investigations subcommittee, Morgan provides many new insights into the notorious Red hunter’s methods and motives.

Full of drama and intrigue, finely etched portraits, and political revelations, Reds brings to life a critical period in American history that has profound relevance to our own time.

Ted Morgan (born March 30, 1932) is a French–American biographer, journalist, and historian.

Life

Morgan was born Comte St. Charles Armand Gabriel de Gramont in Geneva.

He is the son of Gabriel Antoine Armand, Comte de Gramont (1908–1943), a pilot in the French escadrille in England during World War II. Gramont is an old French noble family.

After his father’s death in a training flight, Morgan began to lead two parallel lives. He attended Yale University (where he was a member of Manuscript Society) and worked as a reporter. But he was still a member (albeit a reluctant one) of the French nobility. He was drafted into the French Army where he served for two years from 1955 to 1957, during the Algerian War, initially as a second lieutenant with a Senegalese regiment of Colonial Infantry and then as a propaganda officer. He subsequently wrote in frank detail of his brutalizing experiences while on active service in the bled (Algerian countryside) and of the atrocities committed by both sides during the Battle of Algiers.[1]

Following his military service, Morgan returned to the United States and won the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting in 1961 for what was described as “his moving account of the death of Leonard Warren on the Metropolitan Opera stage.”[2] At the time, Morgan was still a French citizen writing under the name of “Sanche de Gramont”.

In the 1970s, Morgan stopped using the byline “Sanche de Gramont”. He became an American citizen in 1977, renouncing his titles of nobility. The name he adopted as a U.S. citizen, “Ted Morgan”, is an anagram of “de Gramont”. The new name was a conscious attempt to discard his aristocratic French past. He had settled on a “name that conformed with the language and cultural norms of American society, a name that telephone operators and desk clerks could hear without flinching” (On Becoming American, 1978). Morgan was featured in the CBS news program 60 Minutes in 1978. The segment explored Morgan’s reasons for embracing American culture and showed him eating dinner with his family in a fast food restaurant.

Johnny Horton In Concert ~ The Incredibly Rare Live Performances

21 songs, 55 minutes of rare, live Johnny Horton performances from the 1950s and 1960s. All the hits are here, North To Alaska, Battle Of New Orleans, Sink The Bismarck, Johnny Reb, Springtime In Alaska and early classics as well. Enjoy

Sink The Bismarck WW2 Classic

Mega Disasters – The Bismarck

Search for Battleship Bismarck – National Geographic

SINK THE BISMARCK ~ sung by Johnny Horton

Johnny Horton “Sink the Bismark”a

Sink The Bismarck – Johnny Horton

Johnny Horton – Whispering Pines

Johnny Horton – Johnny Reb

Johnny Horton – All For The Love of A Girl

Jim Bridger ~ Johnny Horton

North To Alaska ~ Johnny Horton

Johnny Horton In Concert ~ The Incredibly Rare Live Performances

21 songs, 55 minutes of rare, live Johnny Horton performances from the 1950s and 1960s. All the hits are here, North To Alaska, Battle Of New Orleans, Sink The Bismarck, Johnny Reb, Springtime In Alaska and early classics as well. Enjoy

In the course of the warship’s eight-month career under its sole commanding officer, Capt. Ernst Lindemann, Bismarck conducted only one offensive operation, in May 1941, codenamed Rheinübung. The ship, along with the heavy cruiserPrinz Eugen, was to break into the Atlantic Ocean and raid Allied shipping from North America to Great Britain. The two ships were detected several times off Scandinavia, and British naval units were deployed to block their route. At the Battle of the Denmark Strait, Bismarck engaged and destroyed the battlecruiserHMS Hood, the pride of the Royal Navy, and forced the battleship HMS Prince of Wales to retreat; Bismarck was hit three times and suffered an oil leak from a ruptured tank.

The destruction of Hood spurred a relentless pursuit by the Royal Navy involving dozens of warships. Two days later, heading for the relative safety of occupied France, Bismarck was attacked by obsolescentFairey Swordfishbiplanetorpedo bombers from the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal; one scored a hit that rendered the battleship’s steering gear inoperable. In her final battle the following morning, Bismarck was neutralised by a sustained bombardment from a British fleet, was scuttled by her crew, and sank with heavy loss of life. Most experts agree that the battle damage would have caused her to sink eventually. The wreck was located in June 1989 by Robert Ballard, and has since been further surveyed by several other expeditions.

Construction and characteristics

Bismarck was ordered under the name Ersatz Hannover (“Hannover replacement”), a replacement for the old pre-dreadnoughtSMS Hannover, under contract “F”.[1] The contract was awarded to the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, where the keel was laid on 1 July 1936 at Helgen IX.[3][4] The ship was launched on 14 February 1939 and during the elaborate ceremonies was christened by Dorothee von Löwenfeld, granddaughter of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the ship’s namesake. Adolf Hitler made the christening speech.[4]Fitting-out work followed the launch, during which time the original straight stem was replaced with a raked “Atlantic bow” similar to those of the Scharnhorst-class battleships.[5]Bismarck was commissioned into the fleet on 24 August 1940 for sea trials,[6] which were conducted in the Baltic. Kapitän zur SeeErnst Lindemann took command of the ship at the time of commissioning.[7]

3D rendering of Bismarck duringOperation Rheinübung

Bismarck displaced 41,700 t (41,000 long tons) as built and 50,300 t (49,500 long tons) fully loaded, with an overall length of 251 m (823 ft 6 in), a beam of 36 m (118 ft 1 in) and a maximum draft of 9.9 m (32 ft 6 in).[1] The battleship was Germany’s largest warship,[8] and displaced more than any other European battleship, with the exception ofHMS Vanguard, commissioned after the end of the war.[9]Bismarck was powered by three Blohm & Voss geared steam turbines and twelve oil-fired Wagner superheatedboilers, which developed a total of 148,116 shp (110,450 kW) and yielded a maximum speed of 30.01 knots (55.58 km/h; 34.53 mph) on speed trials. The ship had a cruising range of 8,870 nautical miles (16,430 km; 10,210 mi) at 19 knots (35 km/h; 22 mph).[1]Bismarck was equipped with three FuMO 23 search radar sets, mounted on the forward and stern rangefinders and foretop.[10]

The standard crew numbered 103 officers and 1,962 enlisted men.[6] The crew was divided into twelve divisions of between 180 and 220 men. The first six divisions were assigned to the ship’s armament, divisions one to four for the main and secondary batteries and five and six manning anti-aircraft guns. The seventh division consisted of specialists, including cooks and carpenters, and the eighth division consisted of ammunition handlers. The radio operators, signalmen, and quartermasters were assigned to the ninth division. The last three divisions were the engine room personnel. When Bismarck left port, fleet staff, prize crews, and war correspondents increased the crew complement to over 2,200 men.[11] Roughly 200 of the engine room personnel came from the light cruiserKarlsruhe, which had been lost during Operation Weserübung, the German invasion of Norway.[12]Bismarck‘s crew published a ship’s newspaper titled Die Schiffsglocke (The Ship’s Bell);[13] this paper was only published once, on 23 April 1941, by the commander of the engineering department, Gerhard Junack.[14]

Service history

Bismarck in port in Hamburg

On 15 September 1940, three weeks after commissioning, Bismarck left Hamburg to begin sea trials in Kiel Bay.[16]Sperrbrecher 13 escorted the ship to Arcona on 28 September, and then on to Gotenhafen for trials in the Gulf of Danzig.[17] The ship’s power-plant was given a thorough workout; Bismarck made measured-mile and high speed runs. As the ship’s stability and manoeuvrability were being tested, a flaw in her design was discovered. When attempting to steer the ship solely through altering propeller revolutions, the crew learned that Bismarck could be kept on course only with great difficulty. Even with the outboard screws running at full power in opposite directions, they generated only a slight turning ability.[18]Bismarck‘s main battery guns were first test-fired in late November. The tests proved she was a very stable gun platform.[19] Trials lasted until December; Bismarckreturned to Hamburg, arriving on 9 December, for minor alterations and the completion of the fitting-out process.[16]

The ship was scheduled to return to Kiel on 24 January 1941, but a merchant vessel had been sunk in the Kiel Canal and prevented use of the waterway. Severe weather hampered efforts to remove the wreck, and Bismarckwas not able to reach Kiel until March.[16] The delay greatly frustrated Lindemann, who remarked that “[Bismarck] had been tied down at Hamburg for five weeks … the precious time at sea lost as a result cannot be made up, and a significant delay in the final war deployment of the ship thus is unavoidable.”[20] While waiting to reach Kiel, Bismarck hosted Captain Anders Forshell, the Swedish naval attaché to Berlin. He returned to Sweden with a detailed description of the ship, which was subsequently leaked to Britain by pro-British elements in the Swedish Navy. The information provided the Royal Navy with its first full description of the vessel, although it lacked important facts, including top speed, radius of action, and displacement.[21]

Bismarck on trials; the rangefinders had not yet been installed

On 6 March, Bismarck received the order to steam to Kiel. On the way, the ship was escorted by several Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters and a pair of armed merchant vessels, along with an icebreaker. At 08:45 on 8 March,Bismarck briefly ran aground on the southern shore of the Kiel Canal; she was freed within an hour. The ship reached Kiel the following day, where her crew stocked ammunition, fuel, and other supplies and applied a coat ofdazzle paint to camouflage her. British bombers attacked the harbour without success on 12 March.[22] On 17 March, the old battleship Schlesien, now used as an icebreaker, escorted Bismarck through the ice to Gotenhafen, where the latter continued combat readiness training.[23]

The Naval High Command (Oberkommando der Marine or OKM), commanded by Admiral Erich Raeder, intended to continue the practice of using heavy ships as surface raiders against Allied merchant traffic in the Atlantic Ocean. The two Scharnhorst-class battleships were based in Brest, France, at the time, having just completed Operation Berlin, a major raid into the Atlantic. Bismarck‘s sister shipTirpitz rapidly approached completion.Bismarck and Tirpitz were to sortie from the Baltic and rendezvous with the two Scharnhorst-class ships in the Atlantic; the operation was initially scheduled for around 25 April 1941, when a new moon period would make conditions more favourable.[24]

Work on Tirpitz was completed later than anticipated, and she was not commissioned until 25 February; the ship was not ready for combat until late in the year. To further complicate the situation, Gneisenau was torpedoed in Brest and damaged further by bombs when in drydock. Scharnhorst required a boiler overhaul following Operation Berlin; the workers discovered during the overhaul that the boilers were in worse condition than expected. She would also be unavailable for the planned sortie.[25] Attacks by British bombers on supply depots in Kiel delayed repairs to the heavy cruisers Admiral Scheer and Admiral Hipper. The two ships would not be ready for action until July or August.[26] Admiral Günther Lütjens, Flottenchef (Fleet Chief) of the Kriegsmarine, chosen to lead the operation, wished to delay the operation at least until either Scharnhorst or Tirpitz became available,[27] but the OKM decided to proceed with the operation, codenamed Operation Rheinübung, with a force consisting of onlyBismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen.[25] At a final meeting with Raeder in Paris on 26 April, Lütjens was encouraged by his commander-in-chief to proceed and he eventually decided that an operation should begin as soon as possible to prevent the enemy gaining any respite.[28]

Operation Rheinübung

Bismarck, photographed from Prinz Eugen, in the Baltic at the outset of Operation Rheinübung

On 5 May, Adolf Hitler and Wilhelm Keitel, with a large entourage, arrived to view Bismarck and Tirpitz in Gotenhafen. The men were given an extensive tour of the ships, after which Hitler met with Lütjens to discuss the upcoming mission.[29] On 16 May, Lütjens reported that Bismarck and Prinz Eugen were fully prepared for Operation Rheinübung; he was therefore ordered to proceed with the mission on the evening of 19 May.[30] As part of the operational plans, a group of eighteen supply ships would be positioned to support Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. Four U-boats would be placed along the convoy routes between Halifax and Britain to scout for the raiders.[31]

By the start of the operation, Bismarck‘s crew had increased to 2,221 officers and enlisted men. This included an admiral’s staff of nearly 65 and a prize crew of 80 sailors, who could be used to crew transports captured during the mission. At 02:00 on 19 May, Bismarck departed Gotenhafen and made for the Danish straits. She was joined at 11:25 by Prinz Eugen, which had departed the previous night at 21:18, off Cape Arkona.[32] The two ships were escorted by three destroyers—Z10 Hans Lody, Z16 Friedrich Eckoldt, and Z23—and a flotilla of minesweepers.[33] The Luftwaffe provided air cover during the voyage out of German waters.[34] At around noon on 20 May, Lindemann informed the ship’s crew via loudspeaker of the ship’s mission. At approximately the same time, a group of ten or twelve Swedish aircraft flying reconnaissance encountered the German force and reported its composition and heading, though the Germans did not see the Swedes.[35]

An hour later, the German flotilla encountered the Swedish cruiserHSwMS Gotland; the cruiser shadowed the Germans for two hours in the Kattegat.[36]Gotland transmitted a report to naval headquarters, stating: “Two large ships, three destroyers, five escort vessels, and 10–12 aircraft passed Marstrand, course 205°/20′.”[34] The OKM was not concerned about the security risk posed by Gotland, though both Lütjens and Lindemann believed operational secrecy had been lost.[36] The report eventually made its way to Captain Henry Denham, the British naval attaché to Sweden, who transmitted the information to the Admiralty.[37] The code-breakers at Bletchley Park confirmed that an Atlantic raid was imminent, as they had decrypted reports that Bismarck and Prinz Eugen had taken on prize crews and requested additional navigational charts from headquarters. A pair of Supermarine Spitfires was ordered to search the Norwegian coast for the flotilla.[38]

German aerial reconnaissance confirmed that one aircraft carrier, three battleships, and four cruisers remained at anchor in the main British naval base at Scapa Flow, which confirmed to Lütjens that the British were unaware of his operation. On the evening of 20 May, Bismarck and the rest of the flotilla reached the Norwegian coast; the minesweepers were detached and the two raiders and their destroyer escorts continued north. The following morning, radio-intercept officers on board Prinz Eugen picked up a signal ordering British reconnaissance aircraft to search for two battleships and three destroyers northbound off the Norwegian coast.[39] At 7:00 on the 21st, the Germans spotted four unidentified aircraft, which quickly departed. Shortly after 12:00, the flotilla reachedBergen and anchored at Grimstadfjord, where the ships’ crews painted over the Baltic camouflage with the standard “outboard grey” worn by German warships operating in the Atlantic.[40]

When Bismarck was in Norway, a pair of Bf 109 fighters circled overhead to protect her from British air attacks, but Flying Officer Michael Suckling managed to fly his Spitfire directly over the German flotilla at a height of 8,000 m (26,000 ft) and take photos of Bismarck and her escorts.[41] Upon receipt of the information, Admiral John Tovey ordered the battlecruiserHMS Hood, the newly commissioned battleship HMS Prince of Wales, and six destroyers to reinforce the pair of cruisers patrolling the Denmark Strait. The rest of the Home Fleet was placed on high alert in Scapa Flow. Eighteen bombers were dispatched to attack the Germans, but weather over the fjordhad worsened and they were unable to find the German warships.[42]

Bismarck did not replenish her fuel stores in Norway, as her operational orders did not require her to do so. She had left port 200 t (200 long tons) short of a full load, and had since expended another 1,000 t (980 long tons) on the voyage from Gotenhafen. Prinz Eugen took on 764 t (752 long tons) of fuel.[43] At 19:30 on 21 May, Bismarck, Prinz Eugen, and the three escorting destroyers left Bergen.[44] At midnight, when the force was in the open sea, heading towards the Arctic Ocean, Raeder disclosed the operation to Hitler, who reluctantly consented to the raid. The three escorting destroyers were detached at 04:14 on 22 May, while the force steamed off Trondheim. At around 12:00, Lütjens ordered his two ships to turn toward the Denmark Strait to attempt the break-out into the open Atlantic.[45]

By 04:00 on 23 May, Lütjens ordered Bismarck and Prinz Eugen to increase speed to 27 knots (50 km/h; 31 mph) to make the dash through the Denmark Strait.[46] Upon entering the Strait, both ships activated their FuMO radar detection equipment sets.[47]Bismarck led Prinz Eugen by about 700 m (770 yd); mist reduced visibility to 3,000 to 4,000 m (3,300 to 4,400 yd). The Germans encountered some ice at around 10:00, which necessitated a reduction in speed to 24 knots (44 km/h; 28 mph). Two hours later, the pair had reached a point north of Iceland. The ships were forced to zigzag to avoid ice floes. At 19:22, hydrophone and radar operators aboard the German warships detected the cruiser HMS Suffolk at a range of approximately 12,500 m (13,700 yd).[46]Prinz Eugen‘s radio-intercept team decrypted the radio signals being sent by Suffolk and learned that their location had been reported.[48]

Lütjens gave permission for Prinz Eugen to engage Suffolk, but the captain of the German cruiser could not clearly make out his target and so held fire.[49]Suffolk quickly retreated to a safe distance and shadowed the German ships. At 20:30, the heavy cruiser HMS Norfolk joined Suffolk, but approached the German raiders too closely. Lütjens ordered his ships to engage the British cruiser; Bismarck fired five salvoes, three of which straddled Norfolk and rained shell splinters on her decks. The cruiser laid a smoke screen and fled into a fog bank, ending the brief engagement. The concussion from the 38 cm guns’ firing disabled Bismarck‘s FuMO 23 radar set; this prompted Lütjens to order Prinz Eugen to take station ahead so she could use her functioning radar to scout for the formation.[50]

At around 22:00, Lütjens ordered Bismarck to make a 180-degree turn in an effort to surprise the two heavy cruisers shadowing him. Although Bismarck was visually obscured in a rain squall, Suffolk‘s radar quickly detected the manoeuvre, allowing the cruiser to evade.[51] The cruisers remained on station through the night, continually relaying the location and bearing of the German ships. The harsh weather broke on the morning of 24 May, revealing a clear sky. At 05:07, hydrophone operators aboard Prinz Eugen detected a pair of unidentified vessels approaching the German formation at a range of 20 nmi (37 km; 23 mi), reporting “Noise of two fast-moving turbine ships at 280° relative bearing!”[52]

Battle of the Denmark Strait

At 05:45, German lookouts spotted smoke on the horizon; this turned out to be from Hood and Prince of Wales, under the command of Vice AdmiralLancelot Holland. Lütjens ordered his ships’ crews to battle stations. By 05:52, the range had fallen to 26,000 m (28,000 yd) and Hood opened fire, followed by Prince of Wales a minute later.[53]Hood engaged Prinz Eugen, which the British thought to be Bismarck, while Prince of Wales fired on Bismarck.[d]Adalbert Schneider, the first gunnery officer aboard Bismarck, twice requested permission to return fire, but Lütjens hesitated.[55] Lindemann intervened, muttering “I will not let my ship be shot out from under my ass.”[56] He demanded permission to fire from Lütjens, who relented and at 05:55 ordered his ships to engage the British.[56]

Bismarck as seen from Prinz Eugenafter the Battle of the Denmark Strait

The British ships approached the German ships head on, which permitted them to use only their forward guns; Bismarck and Prinz Eugen could fire full broadsides. Several minutes after opening fire, Holland ordered a 20° turn to port, which would allow his ships to engage with their rear gun turrets. Both German ships concentrated their fire on Hood. About a minute after opening fire, Prinz Eugen scored a hit with a high-explosive 20.3 cm (8.0 in) shell; the explosion detonated unrotated projectile ammunition and started a large fire, which was quickly extinguished.[57] After firing three four-gun salvoes, Schneider had found the range to Hood; he immediately ordered rapid-fire salvoes from Bismarck‘s eight 38 cm guns. He also ordered the ship’s 15 cm secondary guns to engage Prince of Wales. Holland then ordered a second 20° turn to port, to bring his ships on a parallel course withBismarck and Prinz Eugen.[58] Lütjens ordered Prinz Eugen to shift fire and target Prince of Wales, to keep both of his opponents under fire. Within a few minutes, Prinz Eugen scored a pair of hits on the battleship that started a small fire.[59]

Lütjens then ordered Prinz Eugen to drop behind Bismarck, so she could continue to monitor the location of Norfolk and Suffolk, which were still some 10 to 12 nmi (19 to 22 km; 12 to 14 mi) to the east. At 06:00, Hood was completing the second turn to port when Bismarck‘s fifth salvo hit. Two of the shells landed short, striking the water close to the ship, but at least one of the 38 cm armour-piercing shells struck Hood and penetrated her thin deck armour. The shell reached Hood‘s rear ammunition magazine and detonated 112 t (110 long tons) of cordite propellant.[60] The massive explosion broke the back of the ship between the main mast and the rear funnel; the forward section continued to move forward briefly before the in-rushing water caused the bow to rise into the air at a steep angle. The stern also rose as water rushed into the ripped-open compartments.[61] Schneider exclaimed “He is sinking!” over the ship’s loudspeakers.[60] In only eight minutes of firing, Hood had disappeared, taking all but three of her crew of 1,419 men with her.[62]

Bismarck firing her main battery during the battle

Bismarck then shifted fire to Prince of Wales. The British battleship scored a hit on Bismarck with her sixth salvo, but the German ship found her mark with her first salvo. One of the shells struck the bridge on Prince of Wales, though it did not explode and instead exited the other side, killing everyone in the ship’s command centre, save Captain John Leach, the ship’s commanding officer, and one other.[63] The two German ships continued to fire upon Prince of Wales, causing serious damage. Guns malfunctioned on the recently commissioned British ship, which still had civilian technicians aboard.[64] Despite the technical faults in the main battery, Prince of Walesscored three hits on Bismarck in the engagement. The first struck her in the forecastle above the waterline but low enough to allow the crashing waves to enter the hull. The second shell struck below the armoured belt and exploded on contact with the torpedo bulkhead, inflicting minimal damage. The third shell passed through one of the boats carried aboard the ship and then went through the floatplanecatapult without exploding.[65]

At 06:13, Leach gave the order to retreat; only two of his ship’s ten 14 in (360 mm) guns were still firing and his ship had sustained significant damage. Prince of Wales made a 160° turn and laid a smoke screen to cover her withdrawal. The Germans ceased fire as the range widened. Though Lindemann strongly advocated chasing Prince of Wales and destroying her,[66] Lütjens obeyed operational orders to shun any avoidable engagement with enemy forces that were not protecting a convoy,[67] firmly rejecting the request, and instead ordered Bismarck and Prinz Eugen to head for the North Atlantic.[68] In the engagement, Bismarck had fired 93 armour-piercing shells and had been hit by three shells in return.[62] The forecastle hit allowed 1,000 to 2,000 t (980 to 1,970 long tons) of water to flood into the ship, which contaminated fuel oil stored in the bow. Lütjens refused to reduce speed to allow damage control teams to repair the shell hole which widened and allowed more water into the ship.[69] The second hit caused some additional flooding. Shell-splinters from the second hit also damaged a steam line in the turbo-generator room, but this was not serious, as Bismarck had sufficient other generator reserves. The combined flooding from these two hits caused a 9-degree list to port and a 3-degree trim by the bow.[70]

Chase

Map showing the course ofBismarck and the ships that pursued her

After the engagement, Lütjens reported, “Battlecruiser, probably Hood, sunk. Another battleship, King George V or Renown, turned away damaged. Two heavy cruisers maintain contact.”[71] At 08:01, he transmitted a damage report and his intentions to OKM, which were to detach Prinz Eugen for commerce raiding and to make for Saint-Nazaire for repairs.[72] Shortly after 10:00, Lütjens ordered Prinz Eugen to fall behind Bismarck to discern the severity of the oil leakage from the bow hit. After confirming “broad streams of oil on both sides of [Bismarck‘s] wake”,[73]Prinz Eugen returned to the forward position.[73] About an hour later, a British Short Sunderlandflying boat reported the oil slick to Suffolk and Norfolk, which had been joined by the damaged Prince of Wales. Rear Admiral Frederic Wake-Walker, the commander of the two cruisers, ordered Prince of Wales to remain behind his ships.[74]

The Royal Navy ordered all warships in the area to join the pursuit of Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. Tovey’s Home Fleet was steaming to intercept the German raiders, but on the morning of 24 May was still over 350 nmi (650 km; 400 mi) away. The Admiralty ordered the light cruisersManchester, Birmingham, and Arethusa to patrol the Denmark Strait in the event that Lütjens attempted to retrace his route. The battleship Rodney, which had been escorting RMS Britannic and was due for a refit in the Boston Navy Yard, joined Tovey. Two old Revenge-class battleships were ordered into the hunt: Revenge, from Halifax, and Ramillies, which was escorting Convoy HX 127.[75] In all, six battleships and battlecruisers, two aircraft carriers, thirteen cruisers, and twenty-one destroyers were committed to the chase.[76] By around 17:00, the crew aboard Prince of Wales restored nine of her ten main guns to working order, which permitted Wake-Walker to place her in the front of his formation to attack Bismarck if the opportunity arose.[77]

With the weather worsening, Lütjens attempted to detach Prinz Eugen at 16:40. The squall was not heavy enough to cover her withdrawal from Wake-Walker’s cruisers, which continued to maintain radar contact. Prinz Eugen was therefore recalled temporarily.[78]The cruiser was successfully detached at 18:14. Bismarck turned around to face Wake-Walker’s formation, forcing Suffolk to turn away at high speed. Prince of Wales fired twelve salvos at Bismarck, which responded with nine salvos, none of which hit. The action diverted British attention and permitted Prinz Eugen to slip away. After Bismarck resumed her previous heading, Wake-Walker’s three ships took up station on Bismarck‘s port side.[79]

Although Bismarck had been damaged in the engagement and forced to reduce speed, she was still capable of reaching 27 to 28 knots (50 to 52 km/h; 31 to 32 mph), the maximum speed of Tovey’s King George V. Unless Bismarck could be slowed, the British would be unable to prevent her from reaching Saint-Nazaire. Shortly before 16:00 on 25 May, Tovey detached the aircraft carrier Victorious and four light cruisers to shape a course that would position her to launch her torpedo bombers.[80] At 22:00, Victoriouslaunched the strike, which comprised six Fairey Fulmar fighters and nine Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers of 825 Naval Air Squadron, led by Lt Cdr Eugene Esmonde. The inexperienced aviators nearly attacked Norfolk on their approach; the confusion alertedBismarck‘s anti-aircraft gunners.[81]

Bismarck also used her main and secondary batteries to fire at maximum depression to create giant splashes in the paths of the incoming torpedo bombers.[82] None of the attacking aircraft were shot down. Bismarck evaded eight of the torpedoes launched at her, but the [81] ninth struck amidships on the main armoured belt, throwing one man into a bulkhead and killing him and injuring five others. [83] The explosion also caused minor damage to electrical equipment. The ship suffered more serious damage from manoeuvres to evade the torpedoes: rapid shifts in speed and course loosened collision mats, which increased the flooding from the forward shell hole and eventually forced abandonment of the port number 2 boiler room. This loss of a second boiler, combined with fuel losses and increasing bow trim, forced the ship to slow to 16 knots (30 km/h; 18 mph). Divers repaired the collision mats in the bow, after which speed increased to 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph), the speed that the command staff determined was the most economical for the voyage to occupied France.[84]

Shortly after the Swordfish departed the scene, Bismarck and Prince of Wales engaged in a brief artillery duel. Neither scored a hit.[85]Bismarck‘s damage control teams resumed work after the short engagement. The sea water that had flooded the number 2 port side boiler threatened to enter the number 4 turbo-generator feedwater system, which would have permitted saltwater to reach the turbines. The saltwater would have destroyed the turbine blades and thus greatly reduced the ship’s speed. By morning on 25 May, the danger had passed. The ship slowed to 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph) to allow divers to pump fuel from the forward compartments to the rear tanks; two hoses were successfully connected and a few hundred tons of fuel were transferred.[86]

As the chase entered open waters, Wake-Walker’s ships were compelled to zig-zag to avoid German U-boats that might be in the area. This required the ships to steam for ten minutes to port, then ten minutes to starboard, to keep the ships on the same base course. For the last few minutes of the turn to port, Bismarck was out of range of Suffolk‘s radar.[87] At 03:00 on 25 May, Lütjens ordered an increase to maximum speed, which at this point was 28 knots (52 km/h; 32 mph). He then ordered the ship to circle away to the west and then north. This manoeuvre coincided with the period during which his ship was out of radar range; Bismarck successfully broke radar contact and circled back behind her pursuers. Suffolk‘s captain assumed that Bismarck had broken off to the west and attempted to find her by also steaming west. After half an hour, he informed Wake-Walker, who ordered the three ships to disperse at daylight to search visually.[88]

The Royal Navy search became frantic, as many of the British ships were low on fuel. Victorious and her escorting cruisers were sent west, Wake-Walker’s ships continued to the south and west, and Tovey continued to steam toward the mid-Atlantic. Force H, with the aircraft carrier Ark Royal and steaming up from Gibraltar, was still at least a day away.[89] Unaware that he had shaken off Wake-Walker, Lütjens sent long radio messages to Naval Group West headquarters in Paris. The signals were intercepted by the British, from which bearings were determined. They were wrongly plotted on board King George V, leading Tovey to believe that Bismarck was heading back to Germany through the Iceland-Faeroe gap, which kept his fleet on the wrong course for seven hours. By the time the mistake had been discovered, Bismarck had put a sizeable gap between herself and the British ships.[90]

British code-breakers were able to decrypt some of the German signals, including an order to the Luftwaffe to provide support for Bismarck making for Brest, decrypted by Jane Fawcett on 25 May 1941.[91] The French Resistance provided the British with confirmation that Luftwaffe units were relocating there. Tovey could now turn his forces toward France to converge in areas through which Bismarck would have to pass.[92] A squadron of Coastal Command PBY Catalinas based in Northern Ireland joined the search, covering areas where Bismarck might be headed in her attempt to reach occupied France. At 10:30 on 26 May, a Catalina piloted by EnsignLeonard B. Smith of the US Navy located her, some 690 nmi (1,280 km; 790 mi) northwest of Brest.[e] At her current speed, she would have been close enough to reach the protection of U-boats and the Luftwaffe in less than a day. Most British forces were not close enough to stop her.[94]

The only possibility for the Royal Navy was Ark Royal with Force H, under the command of Admiral James Somerville.[95]Victorious, Prince of Wales, Suffolk and Repulse were forced to break off the search due to fuel shortage; the only heavy ships remaining apart from Force H were King George V and Rodney, but they were too distant.[96]Ark Royal‘s Swordfish were already searching nearby when the Catalina found her. Several torpedo bombers also located the battleship, about 60 nmi (110 km; 69 mi) away from Ark Royal. Somerville ordered an attack as soon as the Swordfish returned and were rearmed with torpedoes. He detached the cruiser Sheffield to shadow Bismarck, though Ark Royal‘s aviators were not informed of this.[97] As a result, the Swordfish, which were armed with torpedoes equipped with new magnetic detonators, accidentally attacked Sheffield. The magnetic detonators failed to work properly and Sheffield emerged unscathed.[98]

A Swordfish returns to Ark Royalafter making the torpedo attack againstBismarck

Upon returning to Ark Royal, the Swordfish loaded torpedoes equipped with contact detonators. The second attack comprised fifteen aircraft and was launched at 19:10. At 20:47, the torpedo bombers began their attack descent through the clouds.[99] As the Swordfish approached, Bismarck fired her main battery at Sheffield, straddling the cruiser with her second salvo. Shell fragments rained down on Sheffield, killing three men and wounding several others.[100]Sheffield quickly retreated under cover of a smoke screen. The Swordfish then attacked; Bismarck began to turn violently as her anti-aircraft batteries engaged the bombers.[101] One torpedo hit amidships on the port side, just below the bottom edge of the main armour belt. The force of the explosion was largely contained by the underwater protection system and the belt armour but some structural damage caused minor flooding.[102]

The second torpedo—fired by pilot John Moffat—struck Bismarck in her stern on the port side, near the port rudder shaft. The coupling on the port rudder assembly was badly damaged and the rudder could not be disengaged, locked in a 12° turn to port. The explosion also caused much shock damage.[103] The crew eventually managed to repair the starboard rudder but the port rudder remained jammed. A suggestion to sever the port rudder with explosives was dismissed by Lütjens, as damage to the screws would have left the battleship helpless.[104][105] At 21:15, Lütjens reported that the ship was unmanoeuvrable.[106]

Sinking

With the port rudder jammed, Bismarck was now steaming in a large circle, unable to escape from Tovey’s forces. Though fuel shortages had reduced the number of ships available to the British, the battleships King George Vand Rodney were still available, along with the heavy cruisers Dorsetshire and Norfolk.[107] Lütjens signalled headquarters at 21:40 on the 26th: “Ship unmanoeuvrable. We will fight to the last shell. Long live the Führer.”[108] The mood of the crew became increasingly depressed, especially as messages from the naval command reached the ship. Intended to boost morale, the messages only highlighted the desperate situation in which the crew found itself.[109] As dark fell, Bismarck briefly fired on Sheffield, though the cruiser quickly fled. Sheffield lost contact in the low visibility and Captain Philip Vian‘s group of five destroyers was ordered to keep contact with Bismarck through the night.[110]

The ships encountered Bismarck at 22:38; the battleship quickly engaged them with her main battery. After firing three salvos, she straddled the Polish destroyer ORP Piorun. The destroyer continued to close the range until a near miss at around 12,000 m (39,000 ft) forced her to turn away.[106] Throughout the night and into the morning, Vian’s destroyers harried Bismarck, illuminating her with star shells and firing dozens of torpedoes, none of which hit. Between 05:00 and 06:00, Bismarck‘s crew attempted to launch one of the Arado 196 float planes to carry away the ship’s war diary, footage of the engagement with Hood, and other important documents. The third shell hit from Prince of Wales had damaged the steam line on the aircraft catapult, rendering it inoperative. As it was not possible to launch the aircraft it had become a fire hazard, and was pushed overboard.[111]

Rodney firing on Bismarck, which can be seen burning in the distance

After daybreak on 27 May, King George V led the attack. Rodney followed off her port quarter; Tovey intended to steam directly at Bismarck until he was about 8 nmi (15 km; 9.2 mi) away. At that point, he would turn south to put his ships parallel to his target.[112] At 08:43, lookouts on King George V spotted her, some 23,000 m (25,000 yd) away. Four minutes later, Rodney‘s two forward turrets, comprising six 16 in (406 mm) guns, opened fire, then King George V‘s 14 in (356 mm) guns began firing. Bismarck returned fire at 08:50 with her forward guns; with her second salvo, she straddled Rodney.[113] Thereafter, Bismarck‘s gunnery became increasingly difficult as the ship moved erratically in the heavy seas, unable to steer, depriving Schneider of a predictable course for range calculations.[114]

As the range fell, the ships’ secondary batteries joined the battle. Norfolk and Dorsetshire closed and began firing with their 8 in (203 mm) guns. At 09:02, a 16-inch shell from Rodney struck Bismarck‘s forward superstructure, killing hundreds of men and severely damaging the two forward turrets. According to survivors, this salvo probably killed both Lindemann and Lütjens and the rest of the bridge staff.[115] The main fire control director was also destroyed by this hit, which probably also killed Schneider. A second shell from this salvo struck the forward main battery was disabled, though it would manage to fire one last salvo at 09:27.[116][117] Lieutenant von Müllenheim-Rechberg, in the rear control station, took over firing control for the rear turrets. He managed to fire three salvos before a shell destroyed the gun director, disabling his equipment. He gave the order for the guns to fire independently, but by 09:31, all four main battery turrets had been put out of action.[118] One of Bismarck‘s shells exploded 20 feet off Rodney‘s bow and damaged her starboard torpedo tube—the closest Bismarck came to a direct hit on her opponents.[119]

By 10:00, Tovey’s two battleships had fired over 700 main battery shells, many at very close range; Bismarck had been reduced to a shambles, aflame from stem to stern. She suffered from a 20° list to port and was low in the water by the stern. Rodney closed to 2,700 m (3,000 yd), point-blank range for guns of that size, and continued to fire. Tovey could not cease fire until the Germans struck their ensigns or it became clear they were abandoning ship.[120]Rodney fired two torpedoes from her port-side tube and claimed one hit.[121] According to Ludovic Kennedy, “if true, [this is] the only instance in history of one battleship torpedoing another”.[119]

HMS Dorsetshire picking up survivors

First Officer Hans Oels ordered the men below decks to abandon ship; he instructed the engine room crews to open the ship’s watertight doors and prepare scuttling charges.[122] Gerhard Junack, the chief engineering officer, ordered his men to set the demolition charges with a 9-minute fuse but the intercom system broke down and he sent a messenger to confirm the order to scuttle the ship. The messenger never returned and Junack primed the charges and ordered the crew to abandon the ship.[123] Junack and his comrades heard the demolition charges detonate as they made their way up through the various levels.[124] Oels rushed throughout the ship, ordering men to abandon their posts. After he reached the deck a huge explosion killed him and about a hundred others.[125]

The four British ships fired more than 2,800 shells at Bismarck, and scored more than 400 hits, but were unable to sink Bismarck by gunfire. At around 10:20, running low on fuel, Tovey ordered the cruiser Dorsetshire to sink Bismarckwith torpedoes and sent his battleships back to port.[126]Dorsetshire fired a pair of torpedoes into Bismarck‘s starboard side, one of which hit. Dorsetshire then moved around to her port side and fired another torpedo, which also hit. By the time these torpedo attacks took place, the ship was already listing so badly that the deck was partly awash.[124] It appears that the final torpedo may have detonated against Bismarck‘s port side superstructure, which was by then already underwater.[127] Around 10:35, Bismarck capsized to port and slowly sank by the stern, disappearing from the surface at 10:40.[128] Some survivors reported they saw Captain Lindemann standing at attention at the stem of the ship as she sank.[129]

Junack, who had abandoned ship by the time it capsized, observed no underwater damage to the ship’s starboard side.[123] Von Müllenheim-Rechberg reported the same but assumed that the port side, which was then under water, had been more significantly damaged.[129] Around 400 men were now in the water;[123]Dorsetshire and the destroyer Maori moved in and lowered ropes to pull the survivors aboard. At 11:40, Dorsetshire‘s captain ordered the rescue effort abandoned after lookouts spotted what they thought was a U-boat. Dorsetshire had rescued 85 men and Maori had picked up 25 by the time they left the scene.[130] A U-boat later reached the survivors and found three men, and a German trawler rescued another two. One of the men picked up by the British died of his wounds the following day. Out of a crew of over 2,200 men, only 114 survived.[128]

Bismarck was mentioned in the Wehrmachtbericht (armed forces report) three times during Operation Rheinübung. The first was an account of the Battle of the Denmark Strait;[131] the second was a brief account of the ship’s destruction,[132] and the third was an exaggerated claim that Bismarck had sunk a British destroyer and shot down five aircraft.[133] In 1959, C. S. Forester published his novel Last Nine Days of the Bismarck. The book was adapted for the movie Sink the Bismarck!, released the following year. For dramatic effect the film showed Bismarck sinking a British destroyer and shooting down two aircraft, neither of which happened.[134] That same year, Johnny Horton released the song “Sink the Bismarck”.[135]

Wreckage

Discovery by Robert Ballard

The wreck of Bismarck was discovered on 8 June 1989 by Dr. Robert Ballard, the oceanographer responsible for finding RMS Titanic. Bismarck was found to be resting upright at a depth of approximately 4,791 m (15,719 ft),[136] about 650 km (400 mi) west of Brest. The ship struck an extinct underwater volcano, which rose some 1,000 m (3,300 ft) above the surrounding abyssal plain, triggering a 2 km (1.2 mi) landslide. Bismarck slid down the mountain, coming to a stop two-thirds down.[137]

Ballard’s survey found no underwater penetrations of the ship’s fully armoured citadel. Eight holes were found in the hull, one on the starboard side and seven on the port side, all above the waterline. One of the holes is in the deck, on the bow’s starboard side. The angle and shape indicates the shell that created the hole was fired from Bismarck‘s port side and struck the starboard anchor chain. The anchor chain has disappeared down this hole.[138] Six holes are amidships, three shell fragments pierced the upper splinter belt, and one made a hole in the main armour belt.[139] Further aft a huge hole is visible, parallel to the aircraft catapult, on the deck. The submersibles recorded no sign of a shell penetration through the main or side armour here, and it is likely that the shell penetrated the deck armour only.[140] Huge dents showed that many of the 14 inch shells fired by King George V bounced off the German belt armour.[141]

Ballard noted that he found no evidence of the internal implosions that occur when a hull that is not fully flooded sinks. The surrounding water, which has much greater pressure than the air in the hull, would crush the ship. Instead, Ballard points out that the hull is in relatively good condition; he states simply that “Bismarck did not implode.”[142] This suggests that Bismarck‘s compartments were flooded when the ship sank, supporting the scuttling theory.[143]Ballard added “we found a hull that appears whole and relatively undamaged by the descent and impact”. They concluded that the direct cause of sinking was scuttling: sabotage of engine-room valves by her crew, as claimed by German survivors.[144] Ballard kept the wreck’s exact location a secret to prevent other divers from taking artefacts from the ship, a practice he considered a form of grave robbing.[136]

The whole stern had broken away; as it was not near the main wreckage and has not yet been found, it can be assumed this did not occur on impact with the sea floor. The missing section came away roughly where the torpedo had hit, raising questions of possible structural failure.[145] The stern area had also received several hits, increasing the torpedo damage. This, coupled with the fact the ship sank “stern first” and had no structural support to hold it in place, suggests the stern detached at the surface. In 1942 Prinz Eugen was also torpedoed in the stern, which collapsed. This prompted a strengthening of the stern structures on all German capital ships.[144]

Subsequent expeditions

In June 2001, Deep Ocean Expeditions, partnered with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, conducted another investigation of the wreck. The researchers used Russian-built mini-subs. William N. Lange, a Woods Hole expert, stated, “You see a large number of shell holes in the superstructure and deck, but not that many along the side, and none below the waterline.”[146] The expedition found no penetrations in the main armoured belt, above or below the waterline. The examiners noted several long gashes in the hull, but attributed these to impact on the sea floor.[146]

An Anglo-American expedition in July 2001 was funded by a British TV channel. The team used the volcano—the only one in that area—to locate the wreck. Using ROVs to film the hull, the team concluded that the ship had sunk due to combat damage. Expedition leader David Mearns claimed significant gashes had been found in the hull: “My feeling is that those holes were probably lengthened by the slide, but initiated by torpedoes”.[146]

The 2002 documentary Expedition: Bismarck, directed by James Cameron and filmed in May–June 2002 using smaller and more agile Mir submersibles, reconstructed the events leading to the sinking. These provided the first interior shots. His findings were that there was not enough damage below the waterline to confirm that she had been sunk rather than scuttled. Close inspection of the wreckage confirmed that none of the torpedoes or shells had penetrated the second layer of the inner hull. Using small ROVs to examine the interior, Cameron discovered that the torpedo blasts had failed to shatter the torpedo bulkheads.[146]

Despite their sometimes differing viewpoints, these experts generally agree that Bismarck would have eventually foundered if the Germans had not scuttled her first. Ballard estimated that Bismarck could still have floated for at least a day when the British vessels ceased fire and could have been captured by the Royal Navy, a position supported by the historian Ludovic Kennedy (who was serving on the destroyer HMS Tartar at the time). Kennedy stated, “That she would have foundered eventually there can be little doubt; but the scuttling ensured that it was sooner rather than later.”[144] When asked whether Bismarck would have sunk if the Germans had not scuttled the ship, Cameron replied “Sure. But it might have taken half a day.”[146] In Mearns’ subsequent book Hood and Bismarck, he conceded that scuttling “may have hastened the inevitable, but only by a matter of minutes.”[146] Ballard later concluded that “As far as I was concerned, the British had sunk the ship regardless of who delivered the final blow.”[147]

See also

Unsinkable Sam – cat which is said to have survived the sinking of the Bismarck

“Sink the Bismark” (later “Sink the Bismarck“) is a march song by country music singer Johnny Horton and songwriter Tillman Franks, based on the pursuit and eventual sinking of the GermanbattleshipBismarck in May 1941, during World War II. Horton released this song in 1960, when it reached #3 on the charts. As originally released, the record label used the common misspelling “Bismark”; this error was corrected for later releases of the song. It was inspired by the 1960 movie Sink the Bismarck! and was in fact (with the English producer John Brabourne’s approval) commissioned from Johnny Horton by 20th Century Fox who were worried about the subject’s relative obscurity. While the song was used in U.S. theater trailers for the film, it was not used in the film itself.

Horton soon returned to California and found work in the mail room of Hollywood’s Selznick Studio. It was here that he met his future first wife, secretary Donna Cook.

Horton and his older brother, Frank, briefly pursued the study of geology at Seattle, Washington, in 1948 but both ended after a few weeks. He went to Florida, then back to California before leaving for Alaska to look for gold. It was during this period that he began writing songs. He joined Frank in Seattle, went south to Los Angeles, then after Frank married, left for Texas. After much prodding from his sister Marie, he entered a talent contest at the Reo Palm Isle club in Longview, Texas, sponsored by radio station KGRI inHenderson and hosted by station radio announcer and future country music star Jim Reeves. Horton won first prize—an ashtray on a pedestal. Encouraged by the contest, he returned to California, bought some Western-style clothes and entered talent contests.

Horton came to the attention of entrepreneur Fabor Robison, whose first job as manager was to give him a job with Cliffie Stone‘s Hometown Jamboree on KXLA-TV in Pasadena, California. During his early guest performances he worked with musicians such asMerle Travis and Tennessee Ernie Ford. The station then gave him a regular half-hour Saturday night program billed as The Singing Fisherman, during which he sang and displayed his casting skills with a fishing rod. Around this time he also hosted the radio program Hacienda Party Time for KLAC-TV in Los Angeles.

A mixture of Horton’s television performances and Robison’s acquaintances earned him a couple of singles with the minor Cormac recording company. The first single coupled “Plaid And Calico” with “Done Rovin'” and the second “Coal Smoke, Valve Oil and Steam” with “Birds and Butterflies”. After the Cormac label ceased operation, Robinson acquired the masters and started his own company named Abbott Records. By mid-1952, ten Horton singles had been issued but none was successful. They were, for the most part, ordinary western-style songs.

After marriage to Donna and a honeymoon in Palm Springs, he relocated to Shreveport to be near the Louisiana Hayride, on which he appeared on a regular basis. Robison persuaded Mercury Records A&R man Walter Kilpatrick to hire Horton, who began with his songs “First Train Headin’ South” b/w “(I Wished for an Angel) The Devil Sent Me You” (Mercury 6412), with good reviews by the trade newspapers.

Horton was married twice. His first marriage, to Donna Cook, ended with a divorce granted in Rusk, Texas. In September 1953, he married Billie Jean Jones, the widow of country music singer Hank Williams. (She was Williams’ second wife.) With Billie Jean, Horton had two daughters, Yanina (Nina) and Melody. Billie Jean’s daughter, Jeri Lynn, was also legally adopted by Johnny.

Louisiana Hayride

In September 1952, Horton acquired a full-time band, the Rowley Trio, from Nederland, Texas. Featuring Jerry Rowley playing fiddle, his wife Evelyn playing piano and sister Vera (Dido) playing bass or guitar, they were working at KFDM in Beaumont following some gigs backing Lefty Frizzell. While playing in Beaumont, Horton and Robison heard the Rowley Trio and were sufficiently impressed to offer them a job touring. They started driving Horton to their engagements, but he kept stopping to fish and hunt, so they soon bought him his own car with which he met them at the various venues. The new foursome recruited Bob Stegall but still termed themselves The Singing Fisherman and the Rowley Trio, before changing the name to Johnny Horton and the Roadrunners.

Louisiana Hayride had been playing for more than four years when Horton joined its cast, and during this time it helped many careers, including those of Elvis Presley, Hank Williams, Webb Pierce and Bob Luman.

Horton was, by now, a Shreveport resident. His marriage didn’t survive the increasing touring and Donna relocated back to Los Angeles. He was amenable to a reconciliation, but was unwilling to go back to the West Coast. In August, Louisiana Hayride welcomed back Hank Williams, only twenty-eight years old, but banished from Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry for what some considered his drunkenness and unreliability. On October 19, Williams married Billie Jean Jones, the daughter of a local policeman, in front of a paying audience at New Orleans Municipal Auditorium. On one occasion during the time Billie Jean and Hank were married, Horton talked to the couple backstage, and at that meeting, Hank predicted that Billie Jean would one day marry Horton. He remained a Hayridemember until his death.

Hank Williams died on New Year’s Day 1953. He died in the back seat of a Cadillac traveling to a show in Canton, Ohio. Horton and the Rowleys were driving home from an engagement when they heard the news by radio. They were in Milano, Texas and it was there after a show at the Skyline Club in Austin (the same venue as Williams’ last show) that Horton was killed seven years later in a car accident.

Marriage to Billie Jean

Horton and Billie Jean married on September 26, 1953. They lived on Horton’s performance money, his newly established writing contract with American Music of Los Angeles and the settlement that Billie Jean had received from the Williams estate. Horton and Robison had by now parted company, after a disagreement partially about Horton’s frustration at the amount of time Robison was spending with Jim Reeves. Stegall had left, to be replaced by Richard and Betty Lou Spears, but soon the Rowleys left. Horton started using pick-up bands together with Billie Jean’s brothers, Alton and Sonny Jones. His career had stalled and he became so disillusioned that he got a job working in a fishing tackle shop, playing only weekends for Hayride. Even this ceased in November 1954. His last session for Mercury on September 23 did not generate a single album, and the two-year hiatus had been a strange period with songs ranging from answer songs like “Back to My Back Street” and “Train With a Rhumba Beat”. The best seller was “All for the Love of a Girl” (Mercury 70227) which sold about 35,000 to 45,000 copies.

During this time, country music was changing due to the influence of the new rock music. With the example of Elvis Presley, rockabilly was becoming more common both on records and on country music bills, with Louisiana Hayride one of the most progressive in this respect. It was during that program that Horton first saw Presley and apparently he immediately liked the singer and the style.

Horton then asked Hayride stalwart Tillman Franks of Shreveport for some advice. Five years older than Horton, Franks had played bass for Webb Pierce, managed the Carlisles and Jimmy & Johnny, worked as a booking agent, a car salesman in Houston and served on the police force. He, too, was unemployed. “I hadn’t worked in four or five weeks when Johnny Horton come to the door. He was broke too. He and Billie Jean had spent the money they got after Hank died, and she’d told him to get his ass out and make some more. He said, ‘If I can get Tillman Franks to manage me, I’ll get to number one.’ He came to my house on Summer Street and I told him that I just didn’t like the way he sang. He said, ‘No problem. I’ll sing any way you want me to.’ And he was serious!”[this quote needs a citation]

Horton and Tillman Franks had met in Mississippi, when Horton had toured with the Carlisles. By mid-1955, Franks had assumed control of the[clarification needed] management, and after the end of the Mercury contract, his first job was to find a new company. After communicating with Webb Pierce, who in turn talked to Jim Denny at Cedarwood and Troy Martin at Golden West Melodies, a one-year contract with Columbia was forthcoming. Cedarwood and Golden Melodies would both get publishing on two songs per session as part of the deal. With no advance and a session due in Nasvhille, Tennessee, the duo had to borrow the car owned by the father of David Houston for the journey, with the promise that they would try to get Houston a contract while they were in Nashville.

First big hit

On the way to the session, Horton and Franks stopped in Memphis to see Elvis Presley and left with ten dollars (they were too poor to buy gasoline) and the loan of Bill Black on slap bass. Franks had reservations about his own playing and he wanted the sound to be special. On January 11, 1956, Horton entered the Bradley Film and Recording Studios in Nashville, with Bill Black and two of the industry’s major talents, Grady Martin and producer Owen Bradley‘s brother, Harold. The first song played was the mid-tempo rockabilly “I’m a One Woman Man”, composed by Horton and Franks. Howard Crockett (Hausey) had played “Honky Tonk Man” to Horton and Franks and after a quick rewriting of the tune, they split the credits three ways. It was the second song cut that day. By midnight, Don Law and Franks had completed two more songs, “I’m Ready if You’re Willing” and “I Got a Hole in My Pirogue”. Horton and Franks wanted “Honky Tonk Man” as the lead-off single, but Don Law disliked the song. It was only after the intervention of Jim Denny that Law relented and issued “Honky Tonk Man” on the flip side of “I’m Ready if You’re Willing”. Live shows were arranged to advertise the single with the band featuring Tillman Franks on bass and Tommy Tomlinson on guitar. A native of Hampton, Arkansas, Tomlinson had relocated with his family in 1940 to Minden, Louisiana, east of Shreveport.[1]

The single was reviewed by the March 10 issue of Billboard, which said of “Honky Tonk Man”, “The wine women and song attractions exert a powerful hold on the singer, he admits. The funky sound and pounding beat in the backing suggest the kind of atmosphere he describes. A very good jukebox record.” Of the B-side, it read “Horton sings out this cheerful material with amiable personality. This ever more popular stylist ought to expand his circle of fans with this one.” By May the record had scored No. 9 on the C&W Jockey chart, as well as No. 14 on the Best Seller chart.

Franks assumed control of the Hayride bookings, organizing performances in the South. Horton was contracted for his Monday night performances on KLTV-TV in Tyler, Texas, which restricted how far away he could tour. He wanted to end the contract, so on one of the shows, when it was time to read a commercial for Hol-Sum Bread, a product of Cotton Brothers Bakery in Alexandria, Louisiana, he announced “Friends, we are proud to be here, and proud to be sponsored by Hol-Sum Bread. Tillman Franks my manager eats Hol-Sum Bread, and I eat it too. What I like about Hol-Sum Bread is that it’s never touched by hand. That’s right, they mix it with their feet”. After the show, the station owner called him and said she’d be happier if he stopped working for the station. Now he was free to travel, and he started earning as much as $500 a night.

Further recordings and singles

On May 23 they went back to Music City for a second session. Grady Martin again led the proceedings with Ray Edenton replacing Harold Bradley and Floyd “Lightnin'” Chance standing in on double bass. They began at 7 p.m. with “Take Me Like I Am” before doing the Horton-Hausey composition, “Sugar-Coated Baby”. It was one of those mid-tempo tracks at which Horton was to excel, with playful vocals and Martin’s bass string guitaring. Claude King‘s “I Don’t Like I Did” was another such song. The fourth cut was Autry Inman’s ode to women, “Hooray For That Little Difference”.

The next single (Columbia 21538) had “I Don’t Like I Did” on the B-side but the header was “I’m a One Woman Man” from the January session. Billboard enthused that “One Woman” was a “Smart and polished job,” adding that Horton was “singing with a light, airy touch. Guitar work is just as convincing, adding up to listenable, commercial stuff”.

By August, Columbia and Franks ran an advertisement in Billboard claiming their “Sensational New Artist goes on a spree with his newest two-sided hit”. The accompanying photo did nothing for the image of a rocker, showing him looking middle-aged with a cowboy hat to hide his receding hair. The campaign continued with a tour of western Texas starting in El Paso with Johnny Cash, Faron Young and Roy Orbison. Booked by Bob Neal Stars Inc. of Memphis, the group moved to Ontario, Canada for six dates commencing on the 18th, culminating in Detroit.

Billboard‘s first issue in September noted that

Somewhat like his last hit—’Honky Tonk Man’—this release (I’m A One Woman Man) started off rather quietly, but has gradually become a powerful chart contender. This week it made an appearance on the Houston territorial chart and was selling well in Nashville, Dallas, Durham and Birmingham

Within a week or so he was rewarded with a second country hit, this time maximizing at No. 7 on the Jockey chart and No. 9 on both the Best Seller and Jukebox charts.

On October 14, after shows throughout Florida, Horton played in Memphis again for Bob Neal, this time with Johnny Cash, Faron Young, Sonny James, Roy Orbison and the Teen-Kings and Charlene Arthur. They continued around Tennessee until October 23, before continuing to New Mexico and West Texas. It must have been a confident crowd that arrived at Bradley’s Barn on November 12. Only two songs were produced, the unissued “Over Loving You” and the rockabilly “I’m Coming Home”, composed by Horton and Franks.

“I’m Coming Home” was released with “I Got A Hole In My Pirogue” on the flip side (Columbia 40813). Released as the same time as the Johnny Burnette Trio’s “Lonesome Train” (Coral 61758) and Rosco Gordon‘s “Cheese and Crackers” (Sun 257), Billboardpredicted that “the singer, has material in I’m Coming Home that could give him his biggest record to date”. Horton’s vocal against this twangy backing makes a terrific impression. “Pirogue” is a rockabilly type novelty song of great appeal. It’s hard to see how this can miss becoming a gold mine”. On February 9, Billboard noted that “not only Southern markets are doing good business with this, but Northern cities report that both country and pop customers are going for this in a big way”. It was again a success on the country charts (No. 11 Jockey, No. 15 Best Seller) but it failed to score the popular music charts.

Death

Tommy Tomlinson (c. 1930–1982), Horton’s guitar player from Minden, Louisiana,[2] flew in from Nashville, where he was producing a duet album with Jerry Kennedy (Tom and Jerry). Horton used the morning to make arrangements to go duck hunting with Claude King of Shreveport once King had returned from Austin and he also telephoned Johnny Cash for a chat. Cash declined to accept the call, an omission he regretted for the rest of his life. Against his wife’s wishes, Franks arose from his sickbed, and they began traveling to Austin.

When they got to the Skyline club, Horton stayed in his dressing room, saying that a drunk would kill him if he went near the bar. After the show, they started the 220-mile journey back to Shreveport. Tomlinson was in the back, observing that Horton was driving too fast—Franks was asleep in the front. About 2 a.m., near Milano, Texas, Horton was crossing a bridge when a truck came at them, hitting both sides of the bridge before plunging into Horton’s Cadillac. Horton had in the past avoided head-on collisions by driving into ditches, but on the narrow bridge he had no such opportunity. He was still breathing when he was pulled from the car but died en route to the hospital. The 19-year-old truck driver, James Davis, a student at Texas A&M University in College Station en route to his family residence in Brady in Central Texas, was intoxicated. Franks suffered head injuries, and young Tomlinson had multiple leg fractures, which nine months later required amputation of his left leg. Davis only suffered a broken ankle with other cuts and bruises.

Tillman Franks’ younger brother, William D. “Billy” Franks, a Church of God minister in Shreveport, preached Horton’s funeral on November 8, 1960, the day John F. Kennedy defeated Richard M. Nixon in the race for U.S. President to succeed Dwight D. Eisenhower. Billie Jean Horton hence became a widow for the second time at the age of twenty-eight. Johnny Cash read Chapter 20 from the Book of John, having flown in on a chartered airplane for Horton’s services. Fifty-three years later in 2013, Billy Franks officiated at the funeral in Shreveport of Horton’s friend, Claude King.[3][4][5]

Columbia released various singles and a greatest successes album and on October 5, 1964, Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Three overdubbed “Rock Island Line” and “I Just Don’t Like This Kind of Livin'” to Horton’s demos. Other such sessions were held throughout the sixties for album release. “Sleepy-Eyed John” scored the country charts in April 1961, scoring No. 9 and a year later “Honky Tonk Man” was reissued, scoring No. 11. In February 1963 he made his last appearance in the charts (to date) with “All Grown Up”, which reached No. 26.

Horton is interred, with a cemetery bench in his honor, at the Hillcrest Memorial Park and Mausoleum in Haughton, east of Bossier City in northwestern Louisiana.

Legacy

Horton will be remembered for his major contribution to both country and rockabilly music. When Johnny Cash, a good friend of Horton’s, learned about the accident he said, “[I] locked myself in one of the hotel’s barrooms and cried.”[6] Cash also dedicated his rendition of “When It’s Springtime in Alaska (It’s Forty Below)” to Horton on his album Personal File: “Johnny Horton was a good old friend of mine.”

Some racist songs have sometimes been incorrectly associated with Horton. These songs are by a singer calling himself “Johnny Rebel,” who did not begin recording until after Horton’s death. The mistake is apparently because Horton recorded the historical song “Johnny Reb.”[7][8]

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Fatal Telsa crash shows limits of self-driving technology

DEE-ANN DURBIN

The U.S. government is investigating the first reported death of a driver whose car was in self-driving mode when he crashed. Joshua D. Brown, 40, died May 7 when his Tesla Model S, which was operating on “autopilot,” failed to activate its brakes and hit a truck in Florida.

The crash raises questions about autonomous and semi-autonomous cars, their capabilities and their limits. Here are answers to some of those questions:

___

Q: ARE THERE SELF-DRIVING CARS ON U.S. STREETS RIGHT NOW?

A: Yes, but in limited numbers. Various companies, including Google, Ford and Uber, have test fleets of autonomous cars running in specific areas, including Mountain View, California, and Austin, Texas. Right now, those vehicles always have a steering wheel, brakes and a driver ready to take over in case of a problem, but prototype cars without steering wheels are also being developed.

___

Q: HOW DO THEY WORK?

A: A network of cameras, radars and lasers feeds information to the car’s computers, helping to fill in the gaps in the GPS system, which knows how to get the car from point to point. Cameras let the car see what’s around it, while radar senses things in the dark or in inclement weather. Lasers constantly scan the road and give a three-dimensional picture of what’s going on.

___

Q: ARE THERE LAWS ALLOWING SELF-DRIVING CARS?

A: Right now, it’s a patchwork. Eight states — including Nevada, Michigan, Florida and Tennessee — and Washington D.C. have laws allowing autonomous vehicles. Other states have legislation in the works. Later this summer, the federal government is expected to release guidelines for the safe deployment of autonomous vehicles.

___

Q: WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF SELF-DRIVING CARS?

A: Self-driving cars have the potential to save lives by anticipating accidents before they happen. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said Friday that 90 percent of car accidents are caused by human error, and distracted or drowsy driving accounts for some 13 percent of those crashes. The accidents cost about $870 billion a year globally.

___

Q: CAN I BUY A SELF-DRIVING CAR?

A: No. A few automakers offer cars and SUVs with semi-autonomous modes that can perform some functions without help from the driver, including maintaining a set speed, braking, changing lanes and even parallel parking. Semi-autonomous features can be found on high-end vehicles from Tesla, Mercedes-Benz, Infiniti and Volvo. Some lower-priced models have them, too. Toyota, for example, plans to make automatic emergency braking standard on its vehicles by 2017, ahead of a self-imposed deadline of 2022 that most automakers have agreed to.

___

Q: WHEN WILL COMPLETELY SELF-DRIVING CARS BE AVAILABLE TO CONSUMERS?

A: That’s not yet clear. Volvo plans a large-scale test of driverless cars in Sweden next year. Google wants to make cars available to the public around the end of 2019. BMW, Intel and Israel’s Mobileye have teamed up to roll out the cars by 2021.

IHS Automotive, a consulting firm, predicts that the U.S. will see the earliest deployment of autonomous vehicles, with several thousand on the road by 2020. That number will rise to 4.5 million vehicles by 2035, IHS says. But even if the vehicles are on the road, they might not be in your garage. The earliest self-driving cars might be on-demand taxis, employee shuttles or other shared vehicles.

___

Q: WHAT ARE THE TECHNICAL CHALLENGES TO GETTING AUTONOMOUS CARS ON THE ROAD?

A: Driverless cars need detailed maps to follow, and companies are still mapping roads. They also can have trouble staying within lanes in heavy rain or snow. And, as the Tesla crash showed, there will always be scenarios that driverless cars can’t foresee or navigate correctly. Brown’s car didn’t see an oncoming tractor-trailer because it was white against a brightly lit sky. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the car’s radar is also designed to tune out what looks like overhead signs to prevent false braking.

___

Q: HOW COULD THE TESLA AUTOPILOT NOT SEE SOMETHING AS LARGE AS A TRACTOR-TRAILER?

A: Raj Rajkumar, a computer engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University who leads its autonomous vehicle research, said computers can’t be programmed to handle every situation. But Tesla may need to adjust its radar, he said.

Tesla would not comment directly on the radar and computer programs, but the company issued a statement saying that it continually advances its software by analyzing hundreds of millions of miles of driving data. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is looking at the design and performance of Tesla’s system as part of its investigation.

Tesla has plenty of customers, but still no profit

by Jackie Wattles

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is spending some nights in a sleeping bag on a factory floor.

He’s keeping a very close eye on the electric car maker’s production.

“My desk is at the end of the production line,” Musk told investors Wednesday after the company posted its quarterly earnings report. “I have a sleeping bag in a conference room [nearby] and I use it quite often.”

Tesla’s biggest challenge is scaling up manufacturing to meet customers’ demand — and that’s why the factory isn’t just where Musk is sleeping, it’s where Tesla is spending billions of dollars.

Tesla (TSLA) said Wednesday that it’s decided to invest more than $2 billion on production capacity this year — $750 million more than initially planned.

But that means Musk won’t be able to deliver on what he previously told investors: Tesla may finally turn a profit in 2016.

“Naturally, this will impact our ability to be net cash flow positive for the year, but given the demand for Model 3, investing to meet that demand is the best long-term decision for Tesla,” Musk said.

The automaker made a name for itself with two $70,000-plus luxury models — the Model S and Model X — but a successful mass market vehicle is the cornerstone of Musk’s plan to grow the company.

The first Model 3’s are expected to reach customers next year, and he wants the company’s new gigafactory to be churning them out “at capacity” by the end of 2017. Musk said the company plans to start making 500,000 cars per year by 2018. For comparison, the company made about 50,000 in 2015.

To do that, the company is also looking to hire top-tier manufacturing talent, which Musk said is the “most significant” factor in ensuring a bright future for Tesla.

It’s unclear why, but the company also announced earlier in the day on Wednesday that its vice presidents of production and manufacturing are leaving the company.

Musk’s production plans may face other problems. He has given Tesla suppliers a July 1, 2017 deadline to ship the parts he’s ordered, but “it’s like college term papers. There’s always late term papers.”

Musk also said he plans to start producing more car components in-house — another reason he’s investing more money in Tesla’s manufacturing capabilities.

Tesla affirmed earlier guidance that it plans to put 80,000 to 90,000 new electric cars on the road this year, and that’s despite hitting a production snag with the Model X recently that made the company miss its quarterly delivery guidance.

And the Model S is still selling well. Orders were up 45% compared to the same quarter last year.

Tesla’s stock has struggled in 2016, down more than 7% since January. Shares were essentially flat after-hours when the company issued its report.

Tesla is a hot mess—there is no path to profitability

Tesla shares got a little pop in after-hours trading Wednesday after the electric car maker delivered an earnings report in line with expectations and an optimistic outlook.

But I think the stock’s run is already over.

The primary reason? Profitability.

Getty Images

Elon Musk

Tesla stock soared for a few months starting in February following news that pre-orders for the electric-car maker’s Model 3, with a price tag of $35,000, were approaching 400,000 units.

But, as well-known short seller Jim Chanos so perfectly put it in an interview with CNBC: “We have all kinds of questions on the profitability of the business.”

First, the Model 3. This was Tesla’s play for an “affordable” electric car but it appears to be affordable for everyone EXCEPT Tesla.

Tesla loses more than $4,000 on each of its high-end Model S electric sedans; and that model’s cost is between $70 and $108k. With margins like that, one has to assume a $35k Model 3 can’t be the answer to solving Tesla’s red ink.

Tesla’s income statement reveals the company is hemorrhaging cash at a robust clip. Furthermore, according to TheStreet Ratings, they have a net profit margin of -26.38 percent and a quick ratio of 0.49, which means they have 49 cents in available cash to pay every $1 of current liabilities.

Worse than its lousy earnings and cash flow, Tesla is grossly overvalued compared to its peers. Tesla’s market cap is more than $30 billion, compared to Fiat Chrysler at around $10 billion and Ferrari at around $8 billion. Being valued at 3x more than FCAU — an established and profitable company — looks especially absurd when considering FCAU produces annual sales of over $130 billion, while Tesla produces revenue of only $4 billion.

Furthermore, Tesla’s market cap is nearly two-thirds of General Motors‘ market cap. This is despite the fact that General Motors has a history of selling 10 million cars at a profit each year and Tesla sold less than 100,000 cars last year at a loss. They would have to sell 6.6 million cars this year to justify its current valuation. With less than 400,000 cars on pre-order that doesn’t appear likely anytime soon.

First, he pointed out that, on the back of falling oil prices, demand for electric vehicles (EVs) is slowing. Second, there is growing competition that will cut into Tesla’s margins as prices for EVs fall. Tesla has a lot of competition over the next few years. The industry is already awaiting the Apple car with bated breath that is set to launch in four years. And GM’s Chevy Bolt is similarly priced with a similar range and is set to come out this year. And then we have the Nissan Leaf expected to more competitive in the coming months and years. And add to that first generation vehicles like the BMW i3.

And in China, they have the EV Company LeEco, which recently unveiled its very first electric car that includes self-driving and self-parking capability using voice commands via a mobile app. Besides LeEco, there is another Chinese EV auto maker that sold more electric cars last year than Tesla, Nissan or GM, it’s called BYD Co. and is now targeting the U.S. market.

Lutz believes that competition from industry heavyweights like these could “kill” Tesla in the future.

“The major OEMs like GM, Ford, Toyota, Volkswagen, etc … they have to build electric cars, a certain number, in order to satisfy the requirements in about half of the states. Those have to be jammed into the marketplace, otherwise they can no longer sell SUVs and full-size pickups and the stuff that they really make money on. So that is going to generically depress the prices of electric vehicles,” Lutz warned.

Lutz also explained that companies such as General Motors will not be making any money on their “Tesla killer.” They are making these vehicles to appease Washington.

“The majors are going to accept the losses on the electric vehicles as a necessary cost of doing business in order to sell the big gasoline stuff that people really want. Well, Tesla does not have that option,” Lutz said.

But Musk has a strategy for driving down the cost of his electric car that hinges on achieving economies of scale, bringing down the production cost of the battery pack by 30 percent. This hinges on the success of their future Nevada home called the “Gigafactory.”

The Gigafactory is a one-stop shopping in battery-pack production. The company currently buys battery packs through a deal with Panasonicand has partnered with Panasonic in this venture. Production volume at the Gigafactory is anticipated to be the equivalent of over 30 gigawatt-hours per year; this would mean the Gigafactory would produce more storage than all the lithium battery factories in the world combined. The $5 billion dollar plant is as big as the Pentagon Tesla, and Tesla is hoping to produce 500,000 lithium ion batteries annually.

Musk recently laid out his Energy-branded battery ambition in rock star glory. At the event spectacle, Musk declared that his batteries would someday render the world’s energy grid obsolete. “We are talking about trying to change the fundamental energy infrastructure of the world,” he said.

Musk envisions his affordable, clean energy will one day power the remote villages of underdeveloped countries as well as allowing the average homeowner in industrial nations to go off the grid.

But before you sever your ties with your electrical company, it’s worth noting that not everyone thinks Musk’s plans are achievable – at least not in the time frame he envisions.

Panasonic, the supplier of the lithium-ion cells that form the foundation of Tesla’s batteries, and partner on the company’s forthcoming battery factory — calls Musk’s claims a lot of hyperbole.

“We are at the very beginning in energy storage in general,” said Phil Hermann, chief energy engineer at Panasonic Eco Solutions. “Most of the projects currently going on are either demo projects or learning experiences for the utilities. There is very little direct commercial stuff going on. Elon Musk is out there saying you can do things now that the rest of us are hearing and going, ‘really?’ We wish we could, but it’s not really possible yet.”

And far from the grand stage with little fanfare buried in their November 10Q Tesla also sought to tamper investor’s expectations: “Given the size and complexity of this undertaking, the cost of building and operating the Gigafactory could exceed our current expectations, we may have difficulty signing up additional partners, and the Gigafactory may take longer to bring online than we anticipate.”

With a company saddled with debt and cash-strapped, who is going to shoulder the burden of a delay in the Gigafactory realizing its full potential? That would be shareholders through stock dilution or the American tax payer – but most likely a combination of both. There are those who believe that Musk’s real genius is in following government subsidies.

Tesla’s model relies strongly on a “green” administration. According to the Los Angeles Times, all of Musk’s ventures: Tesla Motors, SolarCityand Space Exploration Technologies, known as SpaceX, together have benefited from an estimated $4.9 billion in government support. The figure underscores a common theme running through his emerging empire: a public-private financing model underpinning long-shot start-ups.

The promise is that the Tesla stockholders and the tax subsidizing public will greatly benefit from major pollution reductions as electric cars break through as viable alternative and gain access to mass-market production.

And frankly, I’m not convinced that electric cars are even good for the environment. First, it’s important to note that at this time, these cars don’t power themselves — they are plugged into an outlet in your garage that connects to an electric power plant. Second, there are a lot of environmental questions about the lithium battery itself. In a 2012 study titled “Science for Environment Policy” published by the European Union, a comparison was made of the lithium ion batteries to other types of batteries available such as; lead-acid, nickel-cadmium, nickel-metal-hydride and sodium Sulphur. They concluded that the lithium ion batteries have the largest impact on metal depletion, making recycling more complicated.

Musk may be a genius and a visionary but the truth is that Tesla has an unproven business model and a stock that is massively overpriced. Even if some year in the distant future there exists the charging infrastructure and pricing available to make electric vehicles conducive to supplant the internal combustion engine, Tesla faces an onslaught of competition that will most likely drive its profit margins further into the red for years to come.

So, as far as I’m concerned, the stock is not a buy — no matter what earnings say. The math just doesn’t add up.

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An ’embarrassing’ break: Dozens of State Department officials just revolted against Obama’s Syria policy

At least 51 “mid-to-high-level State Department officials” have signed a dissent channel cable breaking with President Barack Obama’s policy on Syria and calling for US airstrikes on the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

“Failure to stem Assad’s flagrant abuses will only bolster the ideological appeal of groups such as Daesh, even as they endure tactical setbacks on the battlefield,” the cable reads, according to The Journal.

Daesh is an alternate name for ISIS, aka the Islamic State or ISIL.

“We are aware of a dissent channel cable written by a group of State Department employees regarding the situation in Syria,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told The Wall Street Journal.

“We are reviewing the cable now, which came up very recently, and I am not going to comment on the contents,” he said.

The officials who signed the document “range from a Syria desk officer in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs to a former deputy to the American ambassador in Damascus,” and have all been involved in formulating or carrying out the administration’s Syria policy.

That policy has largely emphasized defeating the Islamic State over bolstering Syria’s anti-Assad rebel groups.

According to the American Foreign Service Association, the dissent channel is “a serious policy channel reserved only for consideration of responsible dissenting and alternative views on substantive foreign policy issues that cannot be communicated in a full and timely manner through regular operating channels and procedures.”

It is available to all “regular or re-employed annuitant employees” of the State Department and the US Agency for International Development.

The number of officials – at least 50 – who have signed the internal document calling for military action against Assad is unusual, a former State Department official who worked on Middle East policy told The Journal.

“It’s embarrassing for the administration to have so many rank-and-file members break on Syria,” they said.

Fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces sit in a lookout position in the western rural area of Manbij.Thomson Reuters

The cable calls for the Obama administration to place more emphasis on defeating Assad – whose brutality is seen by many experts as the driver of Syria’s jihadist problem – by arming and regaining the trust of Syria’s moderate opposition.

That, in turn, will “turn the tide of the conflict against the regime [to] increase the chances for peace by sending a clear signal to the regime and its backers that there will be no military solution to the conflict,” the cable reportedly says.

The CIA-backed factions of the Free Syrian Army – the majority of which are Arab and battling forces loyal to Assad – have at times clashed with Pentagon-trained fighters associated with the Syrian Democratic Forces, who are predominantly Kurdish and focused on defeating the Islamic State.

Their divergent military objectives and ethnicities have bred mistrust and fighting that is ultimately counterproductive to the cause of the revolution.

Several high-ranking government officials, moreover – including Robert S. Ford, a former ambassador to Syria, and Obama’s former defense secretary, Chuck Hagel – have left their positions over Obama’s failure to act decisively against Assad, whose brutality continues to fuel a bloody revolution that has left over 400,000 people dead and millions displaced.

“Many people working on Syria for the State Department have long urged a tougher policy with the Assad government as a means of facilitating arrival at a negotiated political deal to set up a new Syrian government,” Ford told The New York Times on Thursday.

Protesters carry Free Syrian Army flags and chant slogans during an antigovernment protest in the town of Marat Numan in Idlib Province, Syria, on March 4.REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

“The moral rationale for taking steps to end the deaths and suffering in Syria, after five years of brutal war, is evident and unquestionable,” the cable said. ” The status quo in Syria will continue to present increasingly dire, if not disastrous, humanitarian, diplomatic and terrorism-related challenges.”

Assad crossed Obama’s now infamous “red line” for airstrikes in 2013, when he used chemical weapons to kill more than 1,000 people in the eastern Damascus suburb of Ghouta. Obama backed away from that red line when Assad agreed to a Russia-brokered deal to destroy his chemical-weapons stockpile.

Some experts say, however, that the entire stockpile has not been destroyed as promised.

“The US’ Syria policy has always been in the head of one man, and one man only: Barack Obama. No one else has ever really had a say in what happens in Syria,” Tony Badran, a Middle East expert and researcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Business Insiderin a previous interview.

“Obama has owned it since day one – and from day one, he never intended to remove Assad,” he said.

The cable addresses Russia’s bombing campaign in Syria as well, asserting that Moscow and Assad have not taken past ceasefires and “consequential negotiations” seriously.

Russia entered the war in late September 2015 on behalf of Assad under the guise of fighting ISIS. Russian warplanes have primarily targeted non-jihadist, anti-Assad rebel groups, however, many of which are backed by the US, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia.

Government warplanes bombarded the besieged Syrian town of Darayya with barrel bombs last weekend, shortly after food aid was delivered to the town for the first time in nearly four years.

Chart: Obama Admin. On Pace to Issue One Million Green Cards to Migrants from Majority-Muslim Countries

SWEN PFOERTNER/AFP/Getty Images

by CAROLINE MAY

The Obama Administration is on pace to issue more than a million green cards to migrants from majority-Muslim countries, according to an analysis of Department of Homeland Security data.

A chart released by the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest Friday details the surge in immigration to the U.S. from majority-Muslim countries since President Barack Obama took office in 2009.

Specifically, in the first six fiscal years of Obama’s presidency (FY2009 – FY2014), his administration issued 832,014 green cards to migrants majority-Muslim countries, the most of which were issued to migrants from Pakistan (102,000), Iraq (102,000), Bangladesh (90,000), Iran (85,000), Egypt (56,000), and Somalia (37,000).

The total 832,014 new permanent residents do not include migrants on temporary, nonimmigrant visas — which allow foreign nationals to come to the U.S. temporarily for work, study, tourism and the like. As the subcommittee notes, the number also does not include those migrants who overstayed the terms of their visas.

Regardless, as the subcommittee explained in its analysis, the U.S. is playing host to immigrants from majority Muslim countries at an increasing pace.

Between FY 2013 and FY 2014, the number of green cards issued to migrants from Muslim-majority countries increased dramatically – from 117,423 in FY 2013, to 148,810 in FY 2014, a nearly 27 percent increase. Throughout the Obama Administration’s tenure, the United States has issued green cards to an average of 138,669 migrants from Muslim-majority countries per year, meaning that it is nearly certain the United States will have issued green cards to at least 1.1 million migrants from Muslim-majority countries on the President’s watch. It has also been reported that migration from Muslim-majority countries represents the fastest growing class of migrants.

Green cards, or Lawful Permanent Residency, puts immigrants on the path to citizenship and allows for lifetime residency, federal benefits, and work authorization. Included in the totals are refugees, who are required to apply for a green card after one year of residency in the U.S. Unlike other types of immigrants, refugees are immediately eligible for welfare benefits including Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), food stamps, and Medicaid.

A report from the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) indicated that in FY 2013, 91.4 percent of Middle Eastern refugees (accepted to the U.S. between 2008-2013) received food stamps, 73.1 percent were on Medicaid or Refugee Medical Assistance and 68.3 percent were on cash welfare.

51% of U.S. Muslims want Sharia; 60% of young Muslims more loyal to Islam than to U.S.

OCTOBER 15, 2015 3:43 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER

Really, what did you expect? A considerable portion of U.S. domestic and foreign policy is based on the assumption that Islam in the U.S. will be different: that Muslims here believe differently from those elsewhere, and do not accept the doctrines of violence against and subjugation of unbelievers that have characterized Islam throughout its history. But on what is that assumption based? Nothing but wishful thinking. And future generations of non-Muslims will pay the price.

In berating GOP presidential hopeful Ben Carson for suggesting a loyalty test for Muslims seeking high office, CNN host Jake Tapper maintained that he doesn’t know a single observant Muslim-American who wants to Islamize America.

“I just don’t know any Muslim-Americans — and I know plenty — who feel that way, even if they are observant Muslims,” he scowled.

Tapper doesn’t get out much. If he did, chances are he’d run into some of the 51% of Muslims living in the U.S. who just this June told Polling Co. they preferred having “the choice of being governed according to Shariah,” or Islamic law. Or the 60% of Muslim-Americans under 30 who told Pew Research they’re more loyal to Islam than America.

Maybe they’re all heretics, so let’s see what the enlightened Muslims think.

If Tapper did a little independent research he’d quickly find that America’s most respected Islamic leaders and scholars also want theocracy, not democracy, and even advocate trading the Constitution for the Quran.

These aren’t fringe players. These are the top officials representing the Muslim establishment in America today.

Hopefully none of them ever runs for president, because here’s what he’d have to say about the U.S. system of government:

• Muzammil Siddiqi, chairman of both the Fiqh Council of North America, which dispenses Islamic rulings, and the North American Islamic Trust, which owns most of the mosques in the U.S.: “As Muslims, we should participate in the system to safeguard our interests and try to bring gradual change, (but) we must not forget that Allah’s rules have to be established in all lands, and all our efforts should lead to that direction.”

• Omar Ahmad, co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the top Muslim lobby group in Washington: “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Quran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.”

• CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper: “I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future.”

• Imam Siraj Wahhaj, director of the Muslim Alliance in North America: “In time, this so-called democracy will crumble, and there will be nothing. And the only thing that will remain will be Islam.”

• Imam Zaid Shakir, co-founder of Zaytuna College in Berkeley, Calif.: “If we put a nationwide infrastructure in place and marshaled our resources, we’d take over this country in a very short time. . . . What a great victory it will be for Islam to have this country in the fold and ranks of the Muslims.”…

John Owen Brennan (born September 22, 1955)[1][2] is an American government official who is the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He has served as chief counterterrorism advisor to U.S. President Barack Obama; his title was Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, and Assistant to the President.[1][3][4] His responsibilities included overseeing plans to protect the country from terrorism and respond to natural disasters, and he met with the President daily.[5][6]Previously, he advised President Obama on foreign policy and intelligence issues during the 2008 presidential campaign and transition.[7] Brennan withdrew his name from consideration for Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the first Obama administration over concerns about his support for transferring terror suspects to countries where they may be tortured while serving under President George W. Bush.[3][5] Instead, Brennan was appointed Deputy National Security Advisor, a position which did not require Senate confirmation.[3][5][8]

President Barack Obama nominated Brennan as his next director of the CIA on January 7, 2013.[11][12][13] The ACLU called for the Senate not to proceed with the appointment until it confirms that “all of his conduct was within the law” at the CIA and White House.[14] John Brennan was approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee on March 5, 2013 to succeedDavid Petraeus as the Director of the CIA by a vote of 12 to 3.[15]

Career highlights

Brennan began his CIA career as an analyst, presumably in the Washington D.C. area, and spent 25 years with the agency.[1][5][17] At one point in his career, he was a daily intelligence briefer for President Bill Clinton.[5] In 1996 he was CIA station chief in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia when the Khobar Towers bombing killed 19 U.S. servicemen.[5] In 1999 he was appointed chief of staff to George Tenet, then-Director of the CIA.[3][5] Brennan became deputy executive director of the CIA in March 2001.[3] He was director of the newly created Terrorist Threat Integration Center from 2003 to 2004, an office that sifted through and compiled information for President Bush’s daily top secret intelligence briefings and employed the services of analysts from a dozen U.S. agencies and entities.[18] One of the controversies in his career involves the distribution of intelligence to the Bush White House that helped lead to an “Orange Terror Alert“, over Christmas 2003. The intelligence, which purported to list terror targets, was highly controversial within the CIA and was later discredited. An Obama administration official does not dispute that Brennan distributed the intelligence during the Bush era but said Brennan passed it along because that was his job.[19] His last post within the Intelligence Community was as director of the National Counterterrorism Center in 2004 and 2005, which incorporated information on terrorist activities across U.S. agencies.[3][20]

Brennan then left government service for a few years, becoming Chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) and the CEO of The Analysis Corporation (TAC). He continued to lead TAC after its acquisition by Global Strategies Group in 2007 and its growth as the Global Intelligence Solutions division of Global’s North American technology business GTEC, before returning to government service with the Obama administration as Homeland Security Advisor on January 20, 2009.[10]

On January 7, 2013, Brennan was nominated by President Barack Obama to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency.[21]

Counterterrorism advisor to President Obama

In late 2008 Brennan was the reported choice for Director of the CIA in the incoming Obama administration. Brennan withdrew his name from consideration because of opposition to his CIA service under President George W. Bush and past public statements he had made in support of enhanced interrogation and the transfer of terrorism suspects to countries where they might be tortured (extraordinary rendition).[3][5][22] President Obama then appointed him to be his chief counterterrorism advisor, a position that did not require Senate confirmation.[3][5][8]

Brennan and President Barack Obama at a meeting of the Homeland Security Council, May 2009

In August 2009, Brennan criticized some Bush-administration anti-terror policies, saying that waterboarding had threatened national security by increasing the recruitment of terrorists and decreasing the willingness of other nations to cooperate with the U.S.[23] He also described the Obama administration’s focus as being on “extremists” and not “jihadists“. He said that using the second term, which means one who is struggling for a holy goal, gives “these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek” and suggests the US is at war with the religion of Islam.[23]

In an early December 2009 interview with the Bergen Record Brennan remarked, “the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities have to bat 1.000 every day. The terrorists are trying to be successful just once”.[5] At a press conferences days after the failed Christmas Day bomb attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Brennan said U.S. intelligence agencies did not miss any signs that could have prevented the attempt but later said he had let the President down by underestimating a small group of Yemeni terrorists and not connecting them to the attempted bomber.[1][24] Within two weeks after the incident, however, he produced a report highly critical of the performance of U.S. intelligence agencies, concluding that their focus on terrorist attempts aimed at U.S. soil was inadequate.[17] In February 2010, he claimed on Meet the Press that he was tired of Republican lawmakers using national security issues as political footballs, and making allegations where they did not know the facts.[25]

Drone program

In April 2012 Brennan was the first Obama administration official to publicly acknowledge CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. In his speech he argued for the legality, morality, and effectiveness of the program.[26][27][28] The ACLU and other organizations disagreed. In 2011/2012 he also helped reorganize the process, under the aegis of the Disposition Matrix database, by which people outside of war zones were put on the list of drone targets. According to an Associated Press story, the reorganization helped “concentrate power” over the process inside the White House administration.[29][30][31]

In June 2011, Brennan claimed that US counter-terrorism operations had not resulted in “a single collateral death” in the past year because of the “precision of the capabilities that we’ve been able to develop.”[32][33] Nine months later, Brennan claimed he had said “we had no information” about any civilian, noncombatant deaths during the timeframe in question.[33][34] The Bureau of Investigative Journalism disagreed with Brennan, citing their own research[35] that initially led them to believe that 45 to 56 civilians, including six children, had been killed by ten US drone strikes during the year-long period in question.[33] Additional research led the Bureau to raise their estimate to 76 deaths, including eight children and two women.[33] According to the Bureau, Brennan’s claims “do not appear to bear scrutiny.”[33]The Atlantic has been harsher in its criticism, saying that “Brennan has been willing to lie about those drone strikes to hide ugly realities.”[36]

According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Brennan’s comments about collateral death are perhaps explained by a counting method that treats all military-aged males in a strike zone as combatants unless there is explicit information to prove them innocent.[33][37]

CIA Director (2013–present)

Nomination

Morris Davis, a former Chief Prosecutor for the Guantanamo Military Commissions compared Brennan to Canadian Omar Khadr, who was convicted of “committing murder in violation of the law of war”.[38] He suggested that Brennan’s role in targeting individuals for CIA missile strikes was no more authorized than the throwing of the grenade Khadr was accused of.

On February 27, 2013, the Senate Intelligence Committee postponed a vote, expected to be taken the next day on the confirmation of Brennan until the following week. On March 5, the Intelligence Committee approved the nomination 12–3. The Senate was set to vote on Brennan’s nomination on March 6, 2013. However, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul began a talking Senate filibuster of the vote, citing President Barack Obama and his administration’s use of combat drones, stating “No one politician should be allowed to judge the guilt, to charge an individual, to judge the guilt of an individual and to execute an individual. It goes against everything that we fundamentally believe in our country.”[39][40] Paul’s filibuster continued for 13 hours, after which Brennan was confirmed by a vote of 63–34.

Brennan was sworn into the office of CIA Director on March 8, 2013.[41]

Oath of office of the President of the United States

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”[1]

ARTICLE II, SECTION 3, United States Constitution

[The President] shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed….

Hillary Clinton Outlines Plan to Abolish the Second Amendment

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CIA chief: IS working to send operatives to the West

CIA Director John Brennan will tell Congress on Thursday that Islamic State militants are training and attempting to deploy operatives for further attacks on the West and will rely more on guerrilla-style tactics to compensate for their territorial losses.

CIA Director John Brennan will tell Congress on Thursday that Islamic State militants are training and attempting to deploy operatives for further attacks on the West and will rely more on guerrilla-style tactics to compensate for their territorial losses.

In remarks prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee, Brennan says IS has been working to build an apparatus to direct and inspire attacks against its foreign enemies, as in the recent attacks in Paris and Brussels — ones the CIA believes were directed by IS leaders.

“ISIL has a large cadre of Western fighters who could potentially serve as operatives for attacks in the West,” Brennan said, using another acronym for the group. He said IS probably is working to smuggle them into countries, perhaps among refugee flows or through legitimate means of travel.

Brennan also noted the group’s call for followers to conduct so-called lone-wolf attacks in their home countries. He called last week’s attack in Orlando a “heinous act of wanton violence” and an “assault on the values of openness and tolerance” that define the United States as a nation.

He said IS is gradually cultivating its various branches into an interconnected network. The branch in Libya is likely the most advanced and most dangerous, but IS is trying to increase its influence in Africa, he said. The IS branch in the Sinai has become the “most active and capable terrorist group in Egypt,” attacking the Egyptian military and government targets in addition to foreigners and tourists, such as the downing of a Russian passenger jet last October.

Other branches have struggled to gain traction, he says. “The Yemen branch, for instance, has been riven with factionalism. And the Afghanistan-Pakistan branch has struggled to maintain its cohesion, in part because of competition with the Taliban.”

He called IS a “formidable adversary,” but said the U.S.-led coalition has made progress combatting the group, which has had to surrender large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria and has lost some of its leaders in airstrikes. IS has struggled to replenish its ranks of fighters, Brennan said, because fewer of them are traveling to Syria and others have defected.

“The group appears to be a long way from realizing the vision that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi laid out when he declared the caliphate two years ago in Mosul,” Iraq, Brennan said.

He said the group’s ability to raise money has also been curtailed, although the group still continues to generate at least tens of millions of dollars in revenue each month, mostly from taxation and from sales of crude oil.

“Unfortunately, despite all our progress against ISIL on the battlefield and in the financial realm, our efforts have not reduced the group’s terrorism capability and global reach,” he said.

“In fact, as the pressure mounts on ISIL, we judge that it will intensify its global terror campaign to maintain its dominance of the global terrorism agenda.”

Paul Ryan: Trump’s judge comments are ‘textbook…

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Pat Buchanan: Trump ‘Has A Perfect Reason’ to Believe Trump University Judge Does Not Like Him

By Pam Key

Thursday on “The Mike Gallagher Show,” while discussing on the controversy over Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s comments about the the Trump University case and U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s Mexican heritage, former Nixon and Reagan aide and conservative commentator Pat Buchanan said, “Donald has a perfect reason to believe he might be having this thing stuck to him right in the middle of a campaign,” explaining “it might well be because the judge is a Mexican-American that he really does not like Donald Trump.”

When asked if there is merit in those criticizing Trump, Buchanan said, “I really don’t. I mean, I can I understand why they would say that Donald Trump shouldn’t have suggested that it’s because he’s a Mexican-American that he’s biased against him, but I think that’s Trump’s point. Look what did Trump say? He said this judge is really sticking it to me. And he has got some arguments to support that, the dumping of all those documents to the Washington Post, etc.”

He continued, “Look, let me just say this. Donald has a perfect reason to believe he might be having this thing stuck to him right in the middle of a campaign, this guy dropping all these documents, etc. Secondly, and it might well be because the judge is a Mexican-American that he really does not like Donald Trump. There’s an awful lot of Mexican-Americans and, indeed, former presidents of Mexico who have said that they can’t stand the guy. But the basic point is, if Trump believes this, and it may be true, what is he supposed to do if he said what he believes to be true and now everybody wants him to apologize for a statement he believes to be true?”

He added, “The judge is a member of this San Diego La Raza group of lawyers out there. When they say that’s not the real La Raza, that’s not the other — yeah the head of the real la Raza is siting right the White House for heavens sake. An organization that identifies itself as ‘the race” it seems to me its not illegitimate to suggest they might have a bias towards folks like themselves.”

Story 1: Trump Rattles The American Okie Doke Obama Into Stuttering Empty Suit –The Great Pretender — The Truth Hurts — Get Out of Our Lives — Roll It Back To A Full Employment Growing Booming Economy with 67% Labor Participation Rate and Less Than 3% Unemployment Rate — Make America Great Again — Catch Me If You Can — Videos

Psychological projection is a theory in psychology in which humans defend themselves against their own unpleasant impulses by denying their existence while attributing them to others. For example, a person who is habitually rude may constantly accuse other people of being rude. It incorporates blame shifting.

Immigration moderation. Before any new green cards are issued to foreign workers abroad, there will be a pause where employers will have to hire from the domestic pool of unemployed immigrant and native workers. This will help reverse women’s plummeting workplace participation rate, grow wages, and allow record immigration levels to subside to more moderate historical averages.

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Series Id: LNS13327709
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (seas) Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of all civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers
Labor force status: Aggregated totals unemployed
Type of data: Percent or rate
Age: 16 years and over
Percent/rates: Unemployed and mrg attached and pt for econ reas as percent of labor force plus marg attached

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Year

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

Annual

1994

11.8

11.4

11.4

11.2

10.8

10.9

10.7

10.5

10.4

10.3

10.1

10.0

1995

10.2

9.9

9.9

10.0

10.0

10.1

10.1

10.0

10.1

9.9

10.0

10.0

1996

9.8

10.0

9.8

9.9

9.7

9.6

9.7

9.3

9.4

9.4

9.3

9.5

1997

9.4

9.4

9.1

9.2

8.8

8.8

8.6

8.6

8.7

8.4

8.3

8.4

1998

8.4

8.4

8.4

7.9

7.9

8.0

8.1

7.9

7.9

7.8

7.6

7.6

1999

7.7

7.7

7.6

7.6

7.4

7.5

7.5

7.3

7.4

7.2

7.1

7.1

2000

7.1

7.2

7.1

6.9

7.1

7.0

7.0

7.1

7.0

6.8

7.1

6.9

2001

7.3

7.4

7.3

7.4

7.5

7.9

7.8

8.1

8.7

9.3

9.4

9.6

2002

9.5

9.5

9.4

9.7

9.5

9.5

9.6

9.6

9.6

9.6

9.7

9.8

2003

10.0

10.2

10.0

10.2

10.1

10.3

10.3

10.1

10.4

10.2

10.0

9.8

2004

9.9

9.7

10.0

9.6

9.6

9.5

9.5

9.4

9.4

9.7

9.4

9.2

2005

9.3

9.3

9.1

8.9

8.9

9.0

8.8

8.9

9.0

8.7

8.7

8.6

2006

8.4

8.4

8.2

8.1

8.2

8.4

8.5

8.4

8.0

8.2

8.1

7.9

2007

8.4

8.2

8.0

8.2

8.2

8.3

8.4

8.4

8.4

8.4

8.4

8.8

2008

9.2

9.0

9.1

9.2

9.7

10.1

10.5

10.8

11.0

11.8

12.6

13.6

2009

14.2

15.2

15.8

15.9

16.5

16.5

16.4

16.7

16.7

17.1

17.1

17.1

2010

16.7

17.0

17.1

17.1

16.6

16.4

16.4

16.5

16.8

16.6

16.9

16.6

2011

16.2

16.0

15.9

16.1

15.8

16.1

15.9

16.1

16.4

15.8

15.5

15.2

2012

15.2

15.0

14.6

14.6

14.8

14.8

14.8

14.6

14.8

14.4

14.4

14.4

2013

14.5

14.3

13.8

14.0

13.8

14.2

13.8

13.6

13.7

13.7

13.1

13.1

2014

12.7

12.6

12.6

12.3

12.1

12.0

12.2

12.0

11.8

11.5

11.4

11.2

2015

11.3

11.0

10.9

10.8

10.7

10.5

10.4

10.3

10.0

9.8

9.9

9.9

2016

9.9

9.7

9.8

9.7

Obama in Elkhart: Voters should beware of politicians ‘preying’ on economic fears

President Barack Obama says people should beware of politicians who are “preying” on Americans’ anxieties about the economy in a bid to win headlines and votes.

Obama isn’t naming names. But he says some politicians are running on anti-trade, anti-immigrant policies in an effort to play to people’s fears.

Obama made the remarks during a visit to Elkhart, Indiana. He’s holding up the manufacturing community as a symbol of the nation’s climb from recession to recovery.

Obama says his administration’s “smart” decisions played a part in helping Elkhart come back. He says he wants to bust “myths” that Democratic policies are bad for the economy.

To Obama, lingering challenges aren’t enough to forestall a planned victory lap. Arguing that his controversial $840 billion stimulus package was ultimately vindicated, Obama will call on the next president to be willing to spend big to enable further economic growth.

The president is making his eighth visit to the state since taking office in January 2009. Here are details on the visits:

Feb. 2, 2009: Travels to Elkhart for his first event outside the Washington area since taking office 13 days earlier and speaks about his economic stimulus plan at Concord High School as Elkhart County’s unemployment rate was about 15 percent.

May 17, 2009: Delivers commencement address at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, an appearance that drew weeks of criticism from many Catholic bishops and abortion opponents. Then travels to Indianapolis for two Democratic Party fundraisers.

Psychological projection is a theory in psychology in which humans defend themselves against their own unpleasant impulses by denying their existence while attributing them to others.[1] For example, a person who is habitually rudemay constantly accuse other people of being rude. It incorporates blame shifting.

According to some research, the projection of one’s negative qualities onto others is a common process in everyday life.[2]

Historical precursors

A prominent precursor in the formulation of the projection principle was Giambattista Vico,[3][4] and an early formulation of it is found in ancient Greek writer Xenophanes, which observed that “the gods of Ethiopians were inevitably black with flat noses while those of the Thracians were blond with blue eyes.”[citation needed] In 1841, Ludwig Feuerbach was the first to employ this concept as the basis for a systematic critique of religion.[5][6][7]

Psychoanalytic developments

Projection (German: Projektion) was conceptualised by Freud in his letters to Wilhelm Fliess,[8] and further refined by Karl Abraham and Anna Freud. Freud considered that in projection thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings that cannot be accepted as one’s own are dealt with by being placed in the outside world and attributed to someone else.[9] What the ego repudiates is split off and placed in another.[10]

Freud would later come to believe that projection did not take place arbitrarily, but rather seized on and exaggerated an element that already existed on a small scale in the other person.[11] (The related defence of projective identification differs from projection in that there the other person is expected to become identified with the impulse or desire projected outside,[12] so that the self maintains a connection with what is projected, in contrast to the total repudiation of projection proper.)[13]

Melanie Klein saw the projection of good parts of the self as leading potentially to over-idealisation of the object.[14] Equally, it may be one’s conscience that is projected, in an attempt to escape its control: a more benign version of this allows one to come to terms with outside authority.[15]

Carl Jung considered that the unacceptable parts of the personality represented by the Shadow archetype were particularly likely to give rise to projection, both small-scale and on a national/international basis.[19]Marie-Louise Von Franz extended her view of projection, stating that “wherever known reality stops, where we touch the unknown, there we project an archetypal image”.[20]

Psychological projection is one of the medical explanations of bewitchment used to explain the behavior of the afflicted children at Salem in 1692. The historian John Demos asserts that the symptoms of bewitchment experienced by the afflicted girls were due to the girls undergoing psychological projection of repressed aggression.[21]

Practical examples

Victim blaming: The victim of someone else’s accident or bad luck may be offered criticism, the theory being that the victim may be at fault for having attracted the other person’s hostility.[22]

Projection of marital guilt: Thoughts of infidelity to a partner may be unconsciously projected in self-defence on to the partner in question, so that the guiltattached to the thoughts can be repudiated or turned to blame instead, in a process linked to denial.[23]

Bullying: A bully may project his/her own feelings of vulnerability onto the target(s) of the bullying activity. Despite the fact that a bully’s typically denigrating activities are aimed at the bully’s targets, the true source of such negativity is ultimately almost always found in the bully’s own sense of personal insecurityand/or vulnerability.[24] Such aggressive projections of displaced negative emotions can occur anywhere from the micro-level of interpersonal relationships, all the way up through to the macro-level of international politics, or even international armed conflict.[19]

Projection of general guilt: Projection of a severe conscience[25] is another form of defence, one which may be linked to the making of false accusations, personal or political.[19]

Projection of hope: Also, in a more positive light, a patient may sometimes project his or her feelings of hope onto the therapist.[26]

Counter-projection

Jung wrote, “All projections provoke counter-projection when the object is unconscious of the quality projected upon it by the subject.”[27] Thus, what is unconscious in the recipient will be projected back onto the projector, precipitating a form of mutual acting out.[28]

In a rather different usage, Harry Stack Sullivan saw counter-projection in the therapeutic context as a way of warding off the compulsive re-enactment of apsychological trauma, by emphasising the difference between the current situation and the projected obsession with the perceived perpetrator of the original trauma.[29]

Projection may help a fragile ego reduce anxiety, but at the cost of a certain dissociation, as in dissociative identity disorder.[31] In extreme cases, an individual’s personality may end up becoming critically depleted.[32] In such cases, therapy may be required which would include the slow rebuilding of the personality through the “taking back” of such projections.[33]

Criticism

Some studies were critical of Freud’s theory. Research supports the existence of a false-consensus effect whereby humans have a broad tendency to believe that others are similar to themselves, and thus “project” their personal traits onto others. This applies to good traits as well as bad traits and is not a defense mechanism for denying the existence of the trait within the self.[34]

Instead, Newman, Duff, and Baumeister (1997) proposed a new model of defensive projection. In this view, people try to suppress thoughts of their undesirable traits, and these efforts make those trait categories highly accessible—so that they are then used all the more often when forming impressions of others. The projection is then only a by-product of the real defensive mechanism.[35]

Instead, Republicans selected national delegates through the caucus process, a move that put the election of national delegates in the hands of party insiders and activists — leaving roughly 90 percent of the more than 1 million Republican voters on the sidelines.

The decision sparked significant controversy at the time and removed Colorado from the Republican primary map in the early stages of the campaign. But Cruz supporters worked quietly behind the scenes to build an organization to get like-minded Republicans to the March 1 precinct caucuses and capitalized on the Trump campaign’s failure to adapt to the system.

Trump’s campaign didn’t put a visible paid staffer on the ground in Colorado until last week, when it hired Patrick Davis, a Colorado Springs political consultant, to organize national delegate candidates at the 7th Congressional District convention in Arvada. By then, Cruz had won the first six delegates.

Even then, the energy behind Trump’s campaign didn’t materialize in support. He managed to win only seven alternate delegates.

The Trump campaign’s list of preferred national delegates distributed at the state convention on Saturday was riddled with errors and misspellings that only further hurt its chances.

The problems with Trump’s ballots — and the candidate’s comments — raise questions about whether Colorado will figure prominently into a challenge at the national convention about the state’s delegates.

Ahead of the state convention, a Trump campaign strategist said it made the strategic decision not to compete in Colorado because the caucus system favored party insiders.

Trump skipped the state party convention, where Cruz gave a rousing speech that galvanized his supporters.

In an interview at the event, Cruz said Trump was “scared” to attend because he “doesn’t handle losing well.”

Powered at first by volunteer organizers, the Cruz campaign began working to win delegates months ago and amplified the efforts in January when it brought U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, R-Windsor, on board as state chairman. The campaign also teamed with controversial conservative organizations, such as the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, Gun Owners of America and religious liberty groups, to rally support.

Former Colorado state Republican party chairman Ryan Call talked to Laura Ingraham today to explain the delegation-selection process works and how it “cuts out any semblance of democracy or the popular will.” Call said the statewide convention that chooses the delegates reinforces all the worst stereotypes of the party.

“The very time we should be opening up our doors and being more open and transparent, and welcoming people into our Party, we’ve essentially made the decision to close it off and make it more cumbersome and more difficult. And, to prevent the ability of people to have their voice heard in this process. You’re reinforcing all of the very worst stereotypes about the Party and I, frankly, am very concerned about the way voters are going to feel,” Call told Ingraham.

Transcript, via Laura Ingraham Show:

Ingraham: The August 25th announcement that they would no longer do the presidential preference poll at their caucus, my spidey-senses went up when that happened. Was I correct to, at the time, note that this was a sign that they were not going to be bound by the people of Colorado selecting Trump. If that was a risk, they wanted to cut that off at the pass in August. Am I correct in stating that?

Call: That’s exactly right. While the caucus votes we’ve held in previous elections in 2008 and 2012 were always straw polls, they didn’t bind or allocate the delegations. They at least were a snapshot into where voter sentiment is in the state of Colorado, and the decision by the state Republican Party to cancel that vote taken in connection with the caucus really did cut out any semblance of democracy or the popular will in connection with the delegate election event. It became an entire party insiders game with getting delegates to go to county assemblies in the state convention. While Colorado has over a million registered Republican voters, the only votes that really counted were that of the 3,900 delegates that gathered down in Colorado Springs.

Ingraham: How do you become a delegate in Colorado? Does it tend to be more people who are activists within the Party? Is there a Tea Party element? How does that play out?

Call: So, Colorado has a lot of different elements. Tea Party elements, strong second amendment and pro-life supporters, it’s a very diverse coalition. And, lots of factions are involved in the Party. But, the process to become a delegate, to be able to have your voice heard in the process, is admittedly cumbersome, convoluted, complicated, and not friendly to folks that are political novices or are new at this process. You would have had to show up at your local neighborhood caucuses back in March, March 1st, and sit through two or three hour meetings, get elected from among your neighbors at the local neighborhood precinct caucus to go attend a county assembly. Then, from the county assembly, you had to convince the few hundred or a thousand of delegates at the county assembly to move you on to attend the congressional district, or state convention process. Then, you had to show up at the state convention and, as has been widely reported, you had ten seconds to make your pitch to the 3,900 delegates at the state assembly of why they should elect you to go to Cleveland.

Ingraham: At a time where the Republicans are so fractured, and it really is for the most part an anti-Establishment mood within the Party, that’s why Rubio went down in flames, that’s why Jeb couldn’t get any traction, that’s why Kasich is still lower in delegate count than Rubio. These outsiders as they’re called are still managing to capture the imagination and the spirit of the people, but if at the end of all this people just have an overall sense that, if you’re a Republican voter and you vote it doesn’t matter that much, how much damage do you think that will do to the Republican brand or reputation going forward?

Call: That is a great observation, and it’s a concern I feel overwhelmingly as well. The very time we should be opening up our doors and being more open and transparent, and welcoming people into our Party, we’ve essentially made the decision to close it off and make it more cumbersome and more difficult. And, to prevent the ability of people to have their voice heard in this process. You’re reinforcing all of the very worst stereotypes about the Party and I, frankly, am very concerned about the way voters are going to feel. In a swing state like Colorado, for example, even if Ted Cruz or Donald Trump ultimately become the nominee for President, while we’ve been able to make our pitch to the 3,900 delegates at the state convention, there’s million registered Republicans that haven’t been talked to and there’s almost a million and a half unaffiliated voters, independent voters, that are key to deciding the contest in the battleground state and we haven’t done any work in a state like Colorado to build the campaign infrastructure to engage them or allow their voices to be heard. So, the message we’re sending to voters broadly the way this process is going is that your vote doesn’t matter and your voice doesn’t count.

Colorado will not vote for a Republican candidate for president at its 2016 caucus after party leaders approved a little-noticed shift that may diminish the state’s clout in the most open nomination contest in the modern era.

The GOP executive committee has voted to cancel the traditional presidential preference poll after the national party changed its rules to require a state’s delegates to support the candidate who wins the caucus vote.

The move makes Colorado the only state so far to forfeit a role in the early nomination process, according to political experts, but other caucus states are still considering how to adapt to the new rule.

“It takes Colorado completely off the map” in the primary season, said Ryan Call, a former state GOP chairman.

Republicans still will hold precinct caucus meetings in early 2016 to begin the process of selecting delegates for the national convention — but the 37 delegates are not pledged to any specific candidate.

The Democratic Party still will hold a presidential straw poll March 1 — a Super Tuesday vote in a key swing state that is attracting attention from top-tier candidates.

For Republicans, no declared winner means the caucus will lack much of its hype. The presidential campaigns still may try to win delegate slots for their supporters, but experts say the move makes it less likely that candidates will visit Colorado to court voters.

The Colorado system often favors anti-establishment candidates who draw a dedicated following among activists — as evidenced by Rick Santorum’s victory in 2012 caucus. So the party’s movemay hurt GOP contenders such as Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Rand Paul, who would have received a boost if they won the state.

State Republican Party Chairman Steve House said the party’s 24-member executive committee made the unanimous decision Friday — six members were absent — to skip the preference poll.

The move, he said, would give Colorado delegates the freedom to support any candidate eligible at the Cleveland convention in July. Republican National Committee officials confirmed that the change complies with party rules.

“If we do a binding presidential preference poll, we would then pledge our delegates … and the candidates we bind them to may not be in the race by the time we get to the convention,” House said in an interview Tuesday.

The caucus is likely to occur in February, but party officials will meet next month to finalize the date.

In 2008 and 2012, die-hard Republican voters gathered at caucus meetings to begin the delegate-selection process of selecting delegates to the national convention and voice support for presidential candidates in a straw poll.

The votes, however, didn’t require Colorado delegates to support any particular candidate at the national conventions. This allowed for delegates that supported a losing candidate to vote for the nominee and demonstrate party unity at the convention.

But the freedom also opened the door for political mischief, as Colorado saw in 2012 when Ron Paul supporters managed to win a significant portion of the delegate slots, even though Paul finished far behind other candidates in the Colorado caucuses.

The RNC tightened the rules in 2012 to eliminate nonbinding straw polls and help prevent similar stunts in the future, forcing Colorado Republicans to re-evaluate their process. An effort earlier this year to switch to a presidential primary system failed amid party infighting.

“It’s an odd scenario,” said Josh Putnam, a political science lecturer at the University of Georgia who runs a popular blog on the presidential nominating process. “It’s not to say the campaigns won’t be there. … But you won’t have a good reflection of support at the caucuses, much less Colorado Republicans as a whole.”

Other caucus states are grappling with the rule change in different ways as they finalize their plans before the deadline at the end of September, Putnam said, but he is not aware of any state that has abandoned the presidential caucus vote.

With the change, the only way Colorado Republican delegates would remain relevant is the remote chance that no candidate emerges as a clear winner in the primary contest. In this case, the state’s unbound delegates would receive significant attention and may hold the key to victory in a floor fight.

“If there’s the potential for a brokered convention in any way, the unaffiliated delegates become extremely important,” said Joy Hoffman, the Arapahoe County GOP chairwoman who attended the party meeting. “If there is someone who becomes a front-runner, … then nobody’s important. So I think the view became that if we were not bound, it’s not the worse thing that could happen.”

The National Border Patrol Council (NBPC), the organization that represents nearly 17,000 of the Border Patrol agents who risk their lives to secure U.S. borders, is challenging the Colorado GOP for not holding a state primary and instead slating delegates mostly favorable to Trump’s rival

In an exclusive statement to Breitbart News, the National Border Patrol Council wrote:

In our March 30th endorsement statement of Donald J. Trump, we, the National Border Patrol Council called upon the American people to stand with border agents in support of Mr. Trump and his pledge to end illegal immigration. We fully expected that the will of the American electorate, whatever they decided in this primary, would be upheld. It is now clear that voters are being disenfranchised in order to protect established interests.

By cancelling the election in Colorado, the Republican Party has found a brand new way to disenfranchise voters who want secure borders and safe communities. Once again, the will of the public – who have pleaded for immigration enforcement – is being overridden by special interests with agendas. We see the same thing happening across the country, where delegates won by Mr. Trump – through a popular recorded vote – have made secret arrangements to support other candidates, thwarting the will of the millions of voters they collectively are supposed to represent. This is insidious.

I am calling today on the Republican Party to promise free, fair and open elections in America. All candidates should join in this demand. Elections should mean that the people – not party insiders – choose the nominee. We will never secure our immigration system unless the raw will of the American people is imposed through the ballot box. Clearly, politicians and special interests will continue to betray America’s interests if they are left to their own devices.

Over the past weekend, the Colorado Republican Party held its state convention, where at least 30 of the 37 Colorado delegates selected to attend the Republican National Convention and cast a vote for the 2016 nominee favor Cruz.

Following Cruz’s sweep, the Colorado GOP sent out a tweet from its official Twitter account, reading, “We did it! #NeverTrump.”

The tweet was subsequently deleted, but the occurrence is fueling backlash from voters who believe the establishment is obstructing the will of the people.

Trump also weighed in on Twitter about the people of Colorado not having their vote count:
******

(Disclosure: Breitbart Texas sponsored the Green Line podcast for the NBPC in an effort to provide a platform for agents to inform the public about the realities on the border and what Border Patrol agents face. Director Brandon Darby received an award from the Laredo chapter of the NBPC for his work in helping to defend and bring a voice to Border Patrol agents. Breitbart News assisted in covering funeral costs for a slain Border Patrol agent previously. Darby and Breitbart senior management have directly stated and shown that helping to bring a voice to the expressed needs and interests of Border Patrol agents is a top priority–personally, individually and together through Breitbart News.)

Pat Buchanan: Ted Cruz is a Trojan Horse for the GOP establishment

Digital Exclusive: Establishment Shuffle

Paul Ryan on GOP presidential nomination: ‘Count me out’

Paul Ryan – Count Me Out

Why Rule 40b might backfire on GOP establishment

Peggy Lee – The Party’s Over

Peggy Lee The Party’s Over Lyrics

The party’s over
It’s time to call it a day
They’ve burst your pretty balloon
And taken the moon away
It’s time to wind up the masquerade
Just make your mind up the piper must be paid

The party’s over
The candles flicker and dim
You danced and dreamed through the night
It seemed to be right just being with him
Now you must wake up, all dreams must end
Take off your makeup, the party’s over
It’s all over, my friend

The party’s over
It’s time to call it a day
Now you must wake up, all dreams must end
Take off your makeup, the party’s over
It’s all over, my friendIt’s all over, my friend

Pat Buchanan: Let’s face it, a Trump/Cruz ticket would set the country on fire

Via Breitbart, the key bit below starts at 6:30. When he says “set the country on fire,” does he mean people literally setting things on fire in rage over how much they hate a Trump/Cruz ticket? Because I can sort of see that. Trump’s numbers are flaming garbage, as you know, but check out Cruz’s numbers from the same poll:

What should we call that? Smoldering garbage? I’m a Cruz backer but I’m also under no illusion about how popular he is and isn’t among the general electorate. (Although the AP data here is from a poll of adults, not likely voters, please note.) Unlike Trump, he really would have a chance against Hillary this fall, but only because her own numbers are a smoking dumpster — and even then, he’ll have trouble flipping any of Obama’s blue states in 2012 to red. There is no ticket involving Trump or Cruz, let alone both of them, that sets the country on fire. There’s a ticket involving Cruz and someone not named Trump that might eke out a close victory if they catch some breaks. That’s your best-case scenario.

Buchanan’s logic here, if there’s any logic behind this, presumably is that a Trump/Cruz ticket would give the party its best chance at unity against Clinton this fall by reconciling embittered Trump fans and embittered Cruz fans. It would, for sure, eliminate the risk of a major third-party effort from one side or the other. But so what? What’s the prize for bringing the party together only to lose with 45 percent of the vote in a two-way race instead of with 37 percent in a three-way one? Trump/Cruz still leaves you saddled with all of Trump’s negatives at the top of the ticket, with all but the most hardcore Cruz-fan conservatives deeply disaffected with the direction of the party. It’s one thing for Trump to win the nomination by piling up votes in the primaries, it’s another thing for him to coopt the party’s leading conservative lights by bringing them onto his team to serve his agenda. Many Cruz fans would be enraged at him, I’m sure, for tossing his principles aside to join Trump, especially after Trump’s boorish nastiness towards Heidi Cruz. There’d still be a #NeverTrump movement, albeit a bit smaller than it is now as some strong Cruz supporters would eventually decide to suck it up and back Trump. How does all of this add up to setting the country on fire? Which swing voters, among whom Trump is toxic right now, are thinking, “No way will I support that buffoon — unless he puts Ted Cruz on the ticket, in which case ‘game on’”?

Buchanan does make one good point, though. If we go to a brokered convention, which seems likely, it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which Cruz agrees to accept the VP slot. Trump will lead on the first ballot; if he doesn’t clinch there, a bunch of votes will shift to Cruz on the second. If Cruz doesn’t lead on that one, he almost certainly will when more delegates become unbound on the third. Once he takes the lead, what incentive does he have to accept the number-two slot? You’d need to see some delegates shift back to Trump on the fourth ballot or fifth ballot, I think, and then have them end up in a protracted stalemate. In that case, Cruz might eventually cave and agree to be VP. (If only because, once there’s a stalemate, the odds of a dark-horse nominee will rise and Cruz will risk being left with nothing.) So long as Cruz maintains a lead among the delegates, though, he has no reason to bow to any other prospective nominee. If you want a Trump/Cruz ticket, it needs to happen with Trump winning on the first ballot.

Exit question: If you’re saddled with Trump as nominee, wouldn’t one of your top priorities for VP be finding someone who’s exceptionally personally likable, whom voters trust instinctively? They could look at the veep and tell themselves that if that person trusts Trump to run the country, maybe he’s worth taking a chance on. Ted Cruz has many good qualities. Being exceptionally likable isn’t one of them.

MEMBER PROFILE – PAUL RYAN

REP. PAUL RYANWISCONSIN (R)

CONTACT

RYAN AT A GLANCE

Rep. Paul Ryan was elected to the House of Representatives in 1998. Since his arrival in the House, he has been regarded by many as a rising star in a new generation of conservatives. However, his voting record as well as behind-the-scenes backing of an establishment agenda, reveals that he is one of the more moderate members of the House Republican Conference.

Before he ran for office, Ryan worked for Republicans Sen. Bob Kasten and Rep. Jack Kemp. He joined Empower America, a think-tank formed by Rep. Kemp and William Bennett, and became legislative director for Kansas Senator Sam Brownback. He then went home to Wisconsin where he won a seat in the House of Representatives at the age of 28. (National Journal)

Ryan positioned himself as a leading conservative voice on fiscal and economic issues during his tenure as chairman of the House Budget Committee. His budget plan, the Path to Prosperity, “called for freezing most domestic spending for five years and repealing the economic stimulus law in the course of cutting spending more than $6 trillion over 10 years, shrinking federal spending as a percentage of the economy to its lowest level since 1949.” (National Journal) The plan proved controversial with Democrats and the media, who took particular issue with the budget’s plan to eventually replace Medicare with a subsidy that used free market forces to drive down the cost while raising the level of care. (National Journal)

In the wake of his budget passing the House and promoting a more conservative roadmap for the nation’s fiscal future, Ryan was chosen by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney as his running mate. Ryan was selected with the goal of brining a more conservative approach to balance out Romney’s moderate policies, and provide a more youthful demeanor to challenge President Obama, despite Ryan’s voting record. (Washington Post) While the ticket lost in the general election, Ryan was viewed as an asset to Romney’s efforts, providing substance on the campaign trail, reaching out to conservatives while staying loyal to Romney’s talking points.

After the election, Ryan returned to the House and pursued what was supposed to be a more pragmatic approach to policy, that moved Ryan closer to the center. He said that the presidential election reminded him that “[t]he Electoral College matters. That’s what I learned.” (National Journal) Ryan seemed to be increasingly concerned with creating a more geographically broad base for Republicans and his voting record tracked more to the middle. In December 2013, he helped broker a budget deal with liberal Senator Patty Murray that repealed one of the key conservative victories under President Obama’s reign — the sequester budget caps that helped keep spending in check. The Ryan-Murray budget increased fees, and claimed to reduce the deficit in the final years of the 10-year plan, making it unlikely that said reductions would ever be realized. (FreedomWorks) Simplified, Ryan-Murray was trading real spending cuts occurring at the time, for increased spending and spending cuts in future years, which are unlikely to materialize.

In the 114th Congress, Rep. Ryan became chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, where he plans to “fix the tax code, hold the I-R-S [sic] accountable, strengthen Medicare and Social Security, repair the safety net, promote job-creating trade agreements, and determine how best to repeal and replace Obama-care with patient-centered solutions.” (The Drive FM) He has announced that he would not run for president in 2016, choosing instead to devote his efforts in the House to leading the Ways and Means Committee. (FoxNews)

Reflecting his recent move toward the political center, Rep. Ryan has earned a poor Liberty Score.

There can be no doubt that some of Ryan’s prominent entitlement reform efforts—such as the introduction of the Medicare “premium support” proposal that garnered national attention during the 2012 election—have helped conservative solutions enter the forefront of political debate. He has similar success in landing a media spotlight on conservative welfare reform proposals, helping to jumpstart a conversation about the untenable state of spending in these areas. Nonetheless, these contributions to the mainstream dialogue do not excuse his often patently liberal votes. While championing fiscal sanity from his perch on Budget Committee, Ryan voted for an extension of unemployment benefits, for a bailout of the IMF, and several times to increase the debt limit with no discernible reductions.

In the pre-Tea Party days of Washington, Ryan quietly but firmly supported the No Child Left Behind Act, the failed big government approach to education policy, as well as the enormous Medicare prescription drug program. He opposes crony capitalism in theory, but this has not stopped him from endorsing bailouts for banks and the auto industry, as well as a failed stimulus package. He continually supports status quo transportation spending, and even led the charge in the House to make amnesty a reality.

Friendly Republicans will defend Ryan’s consistent moves to the middle as “pragmatic,” but the policy results are the same — gains for a big government agenda. (Mediaite) While Ryan may have an eye toward a more conservative governing vision, and would one day like to see that vision realized, it is a mistake to see him as an enemy of Speaker Boehner or the establishment — he simply provides no true contrast to their culture of surrender.

How GOP Could Still Steal Nomination From Trump Even If He Wins 1,237 Delegates

by Rachel Stockman

The 2016 Republican presidential primary has proven that anything is possible. Last year, no respected pundit worth their airtime would have predicted Donald Trumpwould be the front runner. After Tuesday’s win in Michigan and Mississippi, Trump now has 428 delegates and many say he is well on his way to securing the necessary 1,237 delegates to win the Republican nomination at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio.

So, we wanted to know, even if Trump wins all the needed delegates, is there any possible way the GOP establishment could steal the nomination back from him? The answer is yes. It comes down to some intricacies on how the convention rules are set up, but these rules matter. It would certainly be unprecedented but given the rebuke of Donald Trump by the Republican establishment in recent days, anything is possible.

“There are many ways to undo a first ballot, even if you have the magic number assuming the Trump delegates are not really loyal. They may start out to be loyal and change their minds,” Elaine Karmack, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute told LawNewz.com. Karmack is also the author of “Primary Politics.”

First some background on how the convention process would NORMALLY work — again, this is in your typical election. Delegates are bound by either state party rules or law to vote for the candidate who they are assigned to based on the primary or caucus in that state. However, they are usually only bound in the first round of balloting. After that, it varies by state, but delegates are eventually freed up to change their vote. For example in Massachusetts, Trump won 22 delegates. Those delegates are bound to vote Trump in the first round of balloting only. So you would think, if Trump wins 1,237 delegates or more, there would be one round of balloting and he would win the nomination. Trump is the Republican candidate.

So that’s how it normally works, but this isn’t a normal election. We’ve already heard some rumors of back room dealings going on by the GOP establishment. So here’s how Trump could still lose according to a variety of election law experts with whom we spoke. The delegates could vote to change the convention rules even BEFORE the first round of balloting takes place. That’s right, in the days leading up to the convention, the RNC Rules Committee could recommend rules changes to the Convention Rules Committee. That committee could tweak the recommendations but they they would ultimately have to send the new rules to the floor of the convention for a vote by the delegates. If the delegates vote to change the rules so as to ‘unbind’ themselves, then they could vote for whoever they wanted even in that first round.

“The delegates ultimately have the final say in the rules that will govern the convention. That may mean that they opt to unbind themselves, but a majority of them would have to agree to that,” Josh Putnam, an expert in this matter, and lecturer at the University of Georgia told LawNewz.com.

Now you might say — wait a minute — there are many states that require by law delegates to vote a certain way in the first round of balloting. For example, in Arizona, the law binds all 58 delegates to the winner of the March 22, 2016 primary election. How could the delegates just throw that all away at the convention? Well, because state law can basically be overruled by new national convention rules, according to most legal experts.

“Political parties operate like private clubs. This stuff isn’t law, it is a matter of state party and national rules and regulations,” Gregory Magarian, a elections law professor at Washington University at St. Louis told LawNewz.com. Simply put, the state rules/laws are not enforceable.

“Are the Arizona State troopers going to go to Cleveland and arrest people on the convention floor? I don’t think so,” Karmack said.

In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that parties are protected under the First Amendment right of association. Meaning, political parties are voluntary organizations so they can make their own rules. For more on this, see U.S. Supreme Court decision Cousins v. Wigoda .

“What can you do to (the delegate) if he violates state law? It is doubtful any such action to stop it would be upheld. Even electors can stray under the electoral college, which is a crime under some state laws. No such prosecution would be upheld,” Kenneth Gross, a DC based elections law attorney at Skadden, Arps told LawNewz.com. So bottom line, it appears delegates can change the rules to favor another candidate even before the first round of balloting.

In fact, there was an attempt in 1980 by Sen. Ted Kennedy to unbind delegates during the Democratic National Convention. The move ultimately failed but the Democrats adopted a rule which required delegates to vote in all “good conscience.”

“They recognized a situation in which you abandon the candidate (you are assigned),” Karmack said.

Of course, if this happened, you can bet that Donald Trump would take legal action to stop it. “It would be playing with fire if they take it away from him. You risk tearing the party apart if you take the nomination away from him in ways that are viewed as less then fair,” Putnam told LawNewz.com. Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee Chairman says the prospects of a brokered convention are “highly unlikely.” But again, nothing about this election is typical.

“The reason (the Republican primary) is so unusual is that people worry about Trump and his policies, they also worry that he doesn’t have the right temperament to be President,” Karmack said. She added that if there is a bombshell dropped about Trump in the next few months (as Mitt Romney predicted), that could be enough to push delegates to change their minds — or spur members of the GOP to start lobbying to change the rules.

Zuckerberg criticizes ‘fearful voices calling for building walls’

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg criticized the “fearful voices calling for building walls” during his opening remarks at the company’s developer conference Tuesday in San Francisco.

The social media company’s founder and chief executive said the world has become a global community and warned against people and nations trying to isolate themselves — a possible allusion to GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump, who has heavily pushed a plan to finish building a wall along the Mexican border to limit the influx of immigrants coming to the country illegally.

“We’ve gone from a world of isolated communities to one global community, and we are all better off for it,” Zuckerberg said. “But now, as I look around and I travel around the world, I’m starting to see people and nations turning inward — against this idea of a connected world and community.”
He added: “I hear fearful voices calling for building walls and distancing people they label as others, for blocking free expression, for slowing immigration, reducing trade and, in some cases around the world, even cutting access to the internet.”

Adopting the rhetoric of a politician, Zuckerberg said, “It takes courage to choose hope over fear” and said the company would continue to focus on connecting people.

He did not mention any politician or nation explicitly. But during the speech, he briefly highlighted a number of policy issues including immigration reform, the Syrian refugee crisis, climate change and Ebola.

Zuckerberg has been a vocal advocate for immigration reform, including expanding a visa program for high-skilled immigrants. The Facebook founder’s name has even been invoked on the GOP debate stage as candidates argued over the issue.

Zuckerberg made his remarks during the opening of the company’s annual developers conference. He described Facebook’s 10-year plan, which includes connecting millions of people around the world with basic internet service, as well as making improvements to virtual reality and artificial intelligence technology.